Washington, D.C.: Administration shelves fuel-efficiency program
The Bush administration is abandoning an eight-year, $1.5 billion program to produce highly fuel-efficient cars in favor of a government-industry push to develop vehicles powered by hydrogen fuel cells.
The Energy Department said Secretary Spencer Abraham planned to announce details of the new program, dubbed "Freedom Car," at a major auto show today in Detroit.
The Bush administration has been cool toward the Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles, begun in 1993 with the goal of putting family-size sedans that get 80 mpg into showrooms by 2004.
Companies have produced prototype vehicles getting 70 mpg, but have not come near developing a fleet of such vehicles for mass production.
Houston: Death penalty may drop in child-drowning case
The state would likely forgo the death penalty for Andrea Yates if she accepts responsibility for drowning her five children in the bathtub, a prosecutor disclosed Tuesday as the questioning of prospective jurors got under way.
Yates, 37, confessed to police that on June 20 she drowned her children, ranging in age from 6 months to 7 years, but she has pleaded innocent by reason of insanity.
The district attorney's office is seeking the death penalty. But in court on Tuesday, prosecutor Joe Owmby disclosed that the district attorney's office would likely offer a life sentence "if Yates was willing to accept responsibility for her criminal acts."
London: Anglican archbishop to retire this year
The Archbishop of Canterbury announced his retirement Tuesday as spiritual leader of the world's 70 million Anglicans.
The Most Rev. George Carey, 66, will retire Oct. 31.
The Right Rev. Michael Nazir-Ali, a Pakistan-born bishop, was seen as a strong contender to succeed him.
The Church of England is the "mother church" for the Anglican Communion, which groups autonomous churches in more than 160 countries including 2.5 million Episcopalians in the United States.
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