The Northeast

Storm drops snow, sleet

The Northeast’s first major storm of the season brought a blustery surge of sleet and snow Friday, closing schools, making a mess of highways and triggering a rush on snow blowers and shovels.

The snow was blamed for at least three traffic deaths, and caused lengthy airport delays and hundreds of canceled flights.

Forecasters said the system threatened to deliver an even heavier blow over the weekend, with up to 18 inches of snow forecast in parts of New England.

About 200 flights were canceled Friday at New Jersey’s Newark Liberty International Airport, and travelers were told to expect delays of up to three hours. At New York’s La Guardia airport, about 100 flights had been canceled by Friday evening, and other flights were delayed up to three hours. Delays were also reported at the airports in Philadelphia and Atlanta.

Washington, D.C.

Passenger arrested after charging cockpit

A former prison inmate on a Honolulu-to-Seattle flight charged toward the cockpit, shouting that he wanted to see the pilot, and was subdued by undercover air marshals who were on board to monitor him, officials said.

The incident involved 29-year-old Reno U. Maiava and occurred about 2 1/2 hours into Thursday’s Northwest Airlines Flight 924, according to Dave Adams, spokesman for the federal air marshal service. Maiava, who spent 10 years in prison on two assault convictions, is on active supervision, according to the Washington state Department of Corrections.

Maiava leveled obscenities at federal officials during his initial appearance Friday in U.S. District Court in Seattle. His hands and feet were shackled and he was accompanied by about 10 U.S. marshals.

He did not enter a plea to a charge of interfering with a flight crew. A detention hearing was set for Thursday.

North Dakota

Files to be opened in missing student case

Prosecutors said Friday they were dropping their objection to unsealing their evidence against a man accused in the disappearance of a University of North Dakota student, saying they wanted to clear up “misinformation.”

It wasn’t immediately clear when court files would be available in the state’s case against Alfonso Rodriguez Jr., 50, who has been charged with kidnapping Dru Sjodin, 22, last month from a mall parking lot.

Rodriguez’s public defender, David Dusek, has 10 days to respond to a motion to unseal the papers.

Media organizations had filed motions to force prosecutors to open the case file, but Grand Forks County State’s Atty. Peter Welte also said some inaccurate media reports prompted the move to unseal evidence. He didn’t single out any reports.

Sjodin was last heard from Nov. 22, as she spoke to her boyfriend on a cell phone from the mall parking lot. Bail was set at $5 million for Rodriguez.

Montana

Asbestos cleanup grows

A federal agency that is handling the cleanup of an asbestos-tainted Montana town found similar health problems in a second community nearby and will have to clean it up, too, officials said.

The western Montana town of Libby was contaminated with asbestos fibers from a vermiculite mine that was operated by W.R. Grace & Co. from 1963 to 1990. Asbestos contamination has been blamed for some 200 deaths and health problems of hundreds of other area residents.

Health screenings of residents of Troy, 15 miles to the northwest, revealed the same kind of problems found in Libby’s residents, officials said Thursday.

Newspaper reports in 1999 first linked health problems in Libby to the mine and its vermiculite ore. Ordinarily, vermiculite is safe, but the ore mined at Libby contained harmful tremolite asbestos.