New York City

Vietnam vets honor canine companions

After raising money to help victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and other causes, the Vietnam Veterans of America found they had some money left so they bought a dog.

Not just any dog, but one of the hundred or so plastic DOGNY statues that are being placed around New York City by the American Kennel Club, commemorating the search and rescue dogs that worked at ground zero after 9-11.

The veterans’ dog, gussied up in camouflage combat gear, was placed in the lobby of the Veterans Affairs hospital in Manhattan. It is dedicated to the 4,000 scout, sentry and tracker dogs and their military handlers in the Vietnam War.

“A lot of our guys were dog handlers, so they really appreciate this,” said John Rowan, president of the VVA’s New York chapter.

Texas

Supreme Court issues stay of execution

The Supreme Court on Wednesday blocked the execution of a convicted killer following a last-minute appeal that questioned his mental competency.

The appeal was received at 5:59 p.m., one minute before James Colburn could have been taken from his cell and strapped to the death chamber gurney, officials said.

It was Colburn’s second appeal to the Supreme Court in as many days. The justices Tuesday rejected an appeal that contended Colburn, 42, a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic, unfairly could not assist his lawyers at his 1995 trial because he was so heavily sedated.

In a brief statement, the Supreme Court said the latest appeal went to Justice Antonin Scalia, who then referred it to the full nine-member court, as is routine. The action delays the execution at least 30 days.

The Supreme Court declared in June that executing mentally retarded murderers is unconstitutionally cruel. Justices have refused blanket protection for mentally ill people.

Los Angeles

Group seeks inquiry on militant’s injuries

Relatives and legal representatives of Jewish Defense League leader Irv Rubin called for a full investigation of how he was injured in federal custody on bomb plot charges. Authorities say he hurt himself in a suicide attempt.

“We want to see the videotapes from inside the jail,” Rubin’s wife, Shelley, said in a statement Wednesday.

Rubin, 57, was in critical condition at County-USC Medical Center after undergoing a second surgery Tuesday, according to his family.

Rubin’s attorneys said Monday that their client was brain-dead after surgery, but Shelley Rubin said later that brain activity was detected.

Rubin was injured Monday morning hours before he was to appear in U.S. District Court on charges that he and co-defendant Earl Krugel had plotted to bomb a mosque and the office of an Arab American congressman.

Federal officials said Rubin slashed his neck with a prison-issued razor blade and tumbled 18-feet over a railing at the federal Metropolitan Detention Center.

Boston

Study: MMR vaccine doesn’t cause autism

A large study from Denmark offers reassuring evidence that the widely used measles, mumps and rubella vaccine does not cause autism, as some fear.

Some have speculated that the measles portion of the vaccine might trigger autism, in part because autism often becomes apparent during the second or third year of life, around the same time the shots are given.

However, several large careful studies have turned up no proof of this, and the latest of these was published in today’s issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

Dr. Kreesten Meldgaard Madsen and others from the Danish Epidemiology Science Center in Aarhus reviewed the records of 537,303 children born in Denmark during the 1990s. The risk of autism was the same for those who got the vaccine and those who did not.

Autism cases have risen substantially during the past 20 years, although some speculate this is a result of better recognition of the disorder, not a true increase.

Massachusetts

Mass roadkill grave upsets town officials

The discovery of a mass grave for roadkill in the median of the Massachusetts Turnpike has created an uproar in Stockbridge.

Town officials said they were unaware that the broad, wooded median held thousands of carcasses of animals killed along the roadway and that the site had apparently been in use for decades, until recently.

Turnpike spokesman Bob Bliss said Tuesday that the Stockbridge median was “the only active central depository” remaining along the road and the Pike stopped bringing dead animals there two months ago.

“It’s my understanding that it had been used for almost as long as the Turnpike has been open,” Bliss said, maintaining the Pike had done nothing wrong. The highway dates to 1957.

Preliminary findings show no pollution from the site, estimated to contain the remains of 4,000 deer, bear, moose and other animals, Bliss said.

Salt Lake City

Extortion charge filed in kidnapping case

A South Carolina man was charged Wednesday with trying to extort $3 million for the safe return of Elizabeth Smart, the 14-year-old girl who vanished from her bedroom in June.

The FBI said it ruled out Walter Holloway, 18, as the kidnapper after they found him Tuesday in Charleston, S.C., typing his latest demands by e-mail.

According to an arrest warrant, Holloway confessed he kept up a regular correspondence with Salt Lake City police and the Smart family, boasting he was “the only real kidnapper,” threatening to hurt the girl and demanding, “Tell Ed he can have Elizabeth back as soon as I get the ransom.”

Holloway sent 38 messages over the past two months before the FBI found him Tuesday in front of a computer at his parent’s house.

He was using the screen name “Elizabethsmartkidnapper.”