Mexico City: Prisoner release fails to end airport standoff

State officials freed 12 prisoners Sunday night in hopes of winning freedom for hostages held by farmers protesting construction of a new Mexico City airport.

The action did not appease the protesters, who said they would continue to hold hostages and block major roads.

Armed with rusty machetes and three stolen gas tankers they have threatened to blow up, the protesters are holding at least 14 hostages in a town they’ve controlled for four days.

Los Angeles: Airport shooter reportedly had financial problems

The man who killed two people at the El Al ticket counter at Los Angeles International Airport had been having money problems and his business was on the verge of collapse, the Los Angeles Times reported Sunday.

Hesham Mohamed Hadayet, 41, was killed after the July 4 attack, shot by a security guard.

Hadayet lived with his wife and two sons in suburban Irvine, and was known as a quiet, observant Muslim who wanted people to believe he was running a successful business.

But in recent months, he couldn’t keep up with his liability insurance and his wife began asking neighbors for baby-sitting work, the Times said.

Washington, D.C.: Bush said ready to cut aid to U.N. Population Fund

President Bush is poised to reject the advice of his own fact-finding team and cut off millions of dollars to a United Nations family planning program that abortion opponents contend supports forced abortions in China.

An independent team that the administration sent to China in May concluded the allegations are untrue and recommended that Bush release $34 million to the U.N. Population Fund, said two officials familiar with the issue.

The two officials and others, however, said the White House will instruct State Department employees to cut the funding, which Congress and Bush approved earlier this year.

State Department officials accepted the fact-finders’ conclusion that the U.N. program did not support coerced abortions, but, one senior administration official said, “the White House has decided to interpret it differently.”

Oregon: Wildfire destroys 7 homes

A huge cloud of brown smoke loomed Sunday over the north-central town of Madras as firefighters fought house-to-house against a blaze that had already destroyed seven homes.

Crews in the remote subdivision of Three Rivers managed to save most structures in the evacuated 200-home development, dousing them in water and fire retardant and clearing brush and trees, said David Widmark, spokesman for the Northwest Fire Coordination Center.

Flames spread from a crowning tree to one hilltop home, which then burned. Some homes popped in small fireballs as propane tanks exploded, sending jets of flame dozens of feet into the air.

There was no estimate for containment of the 16,000-acre blaze.