DANIA BEACH, Fla.
Girl, 13, hurt while on spinning ride at park
A 13-year-old girl hit her head while on a spinning ride at an amusement park, putting her in intensive care.
Natashia West was injured Thursday on the Magic Teacup ride at Boomers, just south of Fort Lauderdale. She remained sedated Monday with head injuries.
“All I want is for her to be the same little girl she was,” said Donnie Jackson, her father.
It was not clear how Natashia hit her head or what part of the ride she hit it on.
State officials inspected the ride Friday and found no mechanical problems, state spokesman Terence McElroy said.
WASHINGTON
Army: Rabbi can’t be buried at Arlington
The Army has rejected an appeal by the family of Abraham Klausner, a leading advocate for Holocaust survivors and a University of Denver graduate, to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
The family was told Monday that Klausner’s cremated remains may be stored at the cemetery but that his brief service as an Army chaplain did not qualify him to receive full burial honors.
The decision drew protests from Jewish groups and Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Klausner, a rabbi, was the first Jewish chaplain from the Army to enter the Dachau concentration camp after it was liberated in 1945. After the war, Klausner became an advocate for survivors.
He was 92 when he died Thursday at his home in Santa Fe.
Army officials on Monday attributed the decision to a regulation adopted in 1967 that narrowly restricted ground burials at the popular cemetery to conserve space.
Klausner’s son, Jeremy, said Monday he needed to decide by the day’s end where to bury his father and said cremation was not an option: “The family feels strongly that for religious and (Holocaust) experience reasons, he not be required to be cremated.”
MEXICO CITY
Top Mexican official denies drug link
A Chinese-Mexican businessman charged in the largest drug-related cash seizure in history accused a top Mexican official of forcing him to stash millions in illicit campaign funds in the walls and closets of his Mexico City mansion.
In the first major accusation linking the administration of President Felipe Calderon to Mexico’s drug underworld, Zhenli Ye Gon claims Javier Lozano Alarcon, now Mexico’s labor secretary, threatened to kill him unless he stored duffel bags stuffed with at least $150 million.
But key details in his version of events seem contradictory, unclear or unverifiable, and a senior U.S. anti-drug official said he knew of no evidence that the Calderon administration – which has sent troops into the streets to fight drug cartels – has any links to organized crime.
Lozano Alarcon denied the accusations and said he was considering a defamation lawsuit against Ye Gon.
Ye Gon is charged in Mexico with drug trafficking, money laundering and weapons possession for his alleged role in illegally importing 19 tons of a pseudoephedrine compound used to make methamphetamine – charges he denies. He is thought to be in the United States; Mexico considers him a fugitive.
HOUSTON
Teen who was beaten jumps from ship, dies
A teenager who survived a brutal pipe beating and later testified before Congress in support of a hate-crimes bill died after jumping from a cruise ship into the Gulf of Mexico, his father said Monday.
Officials with Carnival Cruise Lines said an 18-year-old jumped Sunday morning from the Ecstasy, a cruise ship en route from Galveston to Cozumel, Mexico. A man at the home of David Ritcheson identified himself as Ritcheson’s father and confirmed the death.
Ritcheson nearly died in April 2006 at a party in the Houston suburb of Spring when he was beaten, stomped, burned with cigarettes and sodomized with the plastic pole of a patio umbrella. His attackers poured bleach on him and left him for dead.
Prosecutors said the attack was racially motivated, in part because Ritcheson is Mexican- American.
MIAMI
Ron Goldman’s family buys O.J. book rights
The family of Ron Goldman has purchased the rights to O.J. Simpson’s canceled book, “If I Did It,” from a court-appointed bankruptcy trustee in a settlement reached Monday.
Goldman was slain along with Simpson’s ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, in 1994. The former football star has maintained his innocence. He was acquitted of murder, but Goldman’s family won a civil wrongful-death case against him now totaling more than $33 million.
The Goldmans want to rename the book “Confessions of a Double Murderer” and plan to shop it around, family attorney David Cook said.
