Pittsburgh: Carrier to lay off 471 pilots

US Airways announced plans to lay off 471 more pilots by May to offset rising fuel costs and continued weakness in the airline industry.

The bankrupt airline previously said it would lay off 286 pilots by next month. The new cuts call for 326 layoffs by Jan. 7 and 145 more by May.

If all the layoffs and furloughs go through, the Arlington, Va.-based airline will have trimmed about 1,800 of the 6,000 pilots it had before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Airline officials told creditors this week they would need to trim annual costs by up to $1.6 billion a year to return to profitability.

Oklahoma City: 2 dead, 6 hurt in rampage

A teenager went on a shooting spree Saturday in eastern Oklahoma that left two people dead and at least six injured, authorities said.

The violence began about 5 p.m. in Sallisaw after the 18-year-old man, whose name was not released, was confronted by a neighbor for reckless driving, said Kym Koch, spokeswoman for the Oklahoma Bureau of Investigation.

The suspect shot and killed the woman and wounded her husband, Koch said, got into his pickup and drove east.

During a rampage covering about 30 miles, the teen allegedly wounded a salesman and killed a customer at a car dealership, and shot two people at a statuary store, authorities said.

He fired randomly at passing vehicles, then shot a man in Muldrow, Koch said. He also shot at but didn’t hit a Muldrow Police officer before being captured.

Mexico: Health-related bills signed

President Bush signed bills Saturday to accelerate development of high-tech medical devices and to renew support for hundreds of community health centers that serve millions of uninsured patients.

Bush signed the bills on a day when he traveled from his Texas ranch to an economic summit in Mexico.

The first bill reauthorizes federal programs for the 1,000 community health centers that provide care each year for about 12 million people, half of whom have no medical insurance.

Also getting the president’s signature was a bill that requires medical device manufacturers to pay tens of thousands of dollars in new user fees in return for speedier government review of their products.

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., has said that because the Food and Drug Administration lacks adequate resources, too many critical devices are unnecessarily slowed.

Saudi Arabia: Iraq told to comply with U.N.

The Saudi foreign minister urged Iraq on Saturday to cooperate with U.N. weapons inspectors to spare the country and the region from another war.

“We are hopeful that the Iraqi government would do its best and most … to fully implement its international commitments,” Prince Saud told reporters after a meeting with his Syrian counterpart Farouk al-Sharaa.

In neighboring Yemen, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State William Burns said a war against Iraq was not imminent, but could become necessary if Iraq refused to implement U.N. resolutions on getting rid of weapons of mass destruction. Iraq maintains it has no such weapons.