Utah

Panel says river will run through uranium heap

A blue-ribbon science committee warned Thursday that it was a “near certainty” the Colorado River would someday run directly through a massive heap of uranium slag, raising the specter of massive radioactive contamination of the water source for 25 million people in California and the Southwest.

While the slag heap is now about 750 feet from the river’s edge near Moab, Utah, rivers often “migrate,” according to a report by the National Research Council for the Department of Energy.

The scientific panel said it was highly uncertain whether the migration of the river would take years or millennia.

The department has responsibility for cleaning up the 12 million tons of uranium mill tailings and contaminated soil left from a uranium mill that shut down in 1984. The mill provided material for nuclear weapons.

Texas

Elderly suspect arrested after attorney killed

An elderly man apparently angered by a law firm’s refusal to represent him in an asbestos case opened fire at the firm Thursday, killing a veteran attorney, police said.

Another lawyer at Reaud Morgan & Quinn Inc., in Beaumont, subdued the 79-year-old gunman, Police Chief Tom Scofield said.

Cris Quinn, 47, a senior partner and Baylor University law school graduate, was killed.

The chief identified the shooter as Richard Gerzine. After being escorted into the lawyer’s office, Gerzine took out a shotgun from a cardboard box and fired two shots, Scofield said.

Scofield said Gerzine, of nearby Vidor, was angry the firm had refused to represent him in an asbestos-related lawsuit.

Alabama

Girlfriend allegedly cut off boyfriend’s buttocks

A woman enraged at her boyfriend attacked him with a utility knife and cut off nearly all of his buttocks, leaving him near death on a rural road, a prosecutor said Thursday.

The injuries were so severe investigators initially believed the victim was sexually tortured and dragged behind a car in a possible hate crime.

The man has not fully described what happened to police, but they said they believed his girlfriend acted alone. She was arrested Wednesday and charged with attempted murder.

Kimberly King, 26, of Aliceville was jailed without bail.

Police said she began stabbing him after the couple stopped on an isolated highway near Aliceville. When he fell, “she got down on him and just started cutting,” McCool said. The victim, Rodney Outlaw, 25, regained consciousness some time later, and drove about nine miles to the nearest home.

New York

City can’t run homeless from church, court rules

The city will fight a federal appeals court ruling that says the city cannot stop homeless people from sleeping outside a midtown Manhattan church, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Thursday.

In a ruling released late Wednesday, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said it could not see the logic in the city’s decision to roust homeless people camped outside the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church.

The mayor said the city was fighting for the homeless.

“We think … letting people sleep outside without bathroom facilities, without security, without a bed, is just wrong. It’s not compassionate,” Bloomberg said. “We have tried and we will continue to try to convince the church that these people would be better served in the city’s shelter system.”

The church argued the city was violating the First Amendment’s protection for religious activity.