Minnesota

Parents suspect link in four disappearances

Four college-age adults have gone missing in the past few weeks in Minnesota and Wisconsin, all after leaving a bar or a party, and their families said they suspect a link.

The four disappeared within 170 miles of each other.

Josh Guimond was last seen about midnight Saturday as he left a party on the Collegeville campus, about 70 miles west of Minneapolis.

He was the fourth young adult reported missing since Oct. 30, when 21-year-old Erika Marie Dalquist was last seen leaving a Brainerd bar. The next night, Christopher Jenkins, a 21-year-old senior at the University of Minnesota, disappeared after leaving a Halloween party at a Minneapolis bar.

A week later, Michael J. Noll, a junior at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, was last seen leaving a local bar on his 22nd birthday.

Miami

INS releases Cubans who flew to Key West

Eight Cubans who flew a Soviet-built crop-duster to Florida this week were released from detention Friday.

The eight, including a 2-year-old girl, were taken to a public clinic for routine medical tests and vaccinations, and were released to their families later Friday.

The migrants have been in the custody of the Immigration and Naturalization Service since their arrival Monday in Key West. They were interviewed and processed according to the 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act, which lets Cubans who reach American soil apply for U.S. residency.

Alabama

Ex-Klansman blames FBI for church bombing

A former Ku Klux Klansman convicted in a 1963 church bombing that killed four black girls claimed in a letter from prison that the FBI was behind the crime.

Much of Bobby Frank Cherry’s letter, delivered this week to The Associated Press, was copied from a story by an alternative magazine, Media Bypass.

The magazine reported claims that a former U.S. marshal from Birmingham maintained for years that the bombing was instigated by FBI agents and government informants to gain sympathy for civil rights legislation.

The marshal, Dan Moore, based his belief on a telephone call he received from a supervisor several hours before the bombing warning of riots or demonstrations the following week, Cherry’s letter said. Moore died last year at 77.

The prosecutor in the bombing case dismissed Cherry’s claims.

Alaska

FAA tests laser lights for runway safety

Laser lights are being tested at North America’s busiest cargo airport in an effort to prevent pilots from crossing in the path of other aircraft.

The high-intensity lights for Anchorage are one of seven projects being tested nationwide to decrease the incidents of runway incursions, said Roger Motzko of the Federal Aviation Administration’s Alaska region.

Greatland Laser of Anchorage is working with the FAA to come up with a way to make the four yellow “hold lines” ” the lines on runway taxiways that pilots are only supposed to cross with approval from traffic control ” more visible to pilots.

Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport was chosen for the laser light project because Alaska pilots face more visibility obstacles than pilots elsewhere.