Seattle: Sniper suspect’s mother deported to Jamaica

The mother of teenage sniper suspect John Lee Malvo has been deported to Jamaica, a federal official confirmed Friday.

The Justice Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told The Associated Press that Una James, 38, was en route to Jamaica, her home country. She left Seattle Thursday night for Miami and was to be flown Friday from there to Jamaica, the official said.

James entered the country illegally in 2000 and recently had been living in an undisclosed area about an hour from Seattle.

Malvo, 17, and John Allen Muhammad, 41, are suspected of shooting 18 people, killing 13 of them, in Maryland, Virginia, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Washington, D.C.

New Jersey: Deportation deadline near for 5 countries

Men from five Arab or Muslim countries have until Monday to submit to fingerprints, photographs and interviews with the government, or face deportation.

Men from 13 other nations have until Jan. 10.

The men must show a passport with entry stamp, identification and work or school documents. Exemptions are made for permanent residents, those granted asylum and diplomats and their dependents.

Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft ordered the registrations last month to better track foreigners in this country. Authorities estimate 10,000 people are affected.

Those required to register by Monday are males 16 or older born in Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan or Syria who entered the U.S. on or before Sept. 10, 2002.

Phoenix: Arizona firefighter claims incompetence

A man accused of setting one of two wildfires that merged into a 469,000-acre blaze and destroyed nearly 500 homes this summer claims he is mentally incompetent and unfit to stand trail.

Leonard Gregg, a contract firefighter, is charged with two federal counts of arson and is jailed without bond.

He is accused of lighting a fire June 18 that merged with another blaze to become the largest in Arizona’s history. According to court documents, he told an investigator he set the fire so he could get work on a firefighting crew.

The other fire was set by a lost hiker trying to signal rescuers. The hiker wasn’t charged.

Gregg’s attorney, Deborah Euler-Ajayi, said Gregg “has many symptoms of fetal alcohol syndrome, his mental functioning is very low, he has poor capacity for abstract thinking (and) he functions … at a very primitive level.”