Virginia

Guard says sniper suspect boasted about shooting teen

Sniper suspect Lee Boyd Malvo told a prison guard that he shot a teenage victim to anger Montgomery County, Md., Police Chief Charles Moose and that he had intended to shoot an entire busload of children, the guard testified Thursday.

Joseph Stracke said at a preliminary hearing that Malvo spoke proudly of shootings committed by him and fellow suspect John Allen Muhammad.

Malvo told Stracke that Muhammad shot two women in Alabama and talked about cleaning up ghettos as a rationale for a killing in Louisiana, the guard said.

Stracke said he asked Malvo why he shot a middle-school student. “To make Chief Moose upset, to make him emotional so he wouldn’t think straight, and it worked,” the Maryland prison guard quoted Malvo as saying.

Defense lawyers are seeking to have Stracke’s testimony ruled inadmissible at Malvo’s trial.

WASHINGTON, D.C.

Head Start changes approved

The House narrowly approved a retooling of the Head Start preschool program early today, voting to shift control to some states and to allow religious centers to hire people based on their faith.

The 217-216 vote just before 1 a.m. EDT capped a debate in which Democrats accused Republicans of dismantling a program that has provided nutritional, social, emotional and literacy help to more than 20 million needy children since 1965.

The bill would allow up to eight states to manage Head Start so they could coordinate the program, and merge its money, with other childhood education efforts. Care providers now get the money directly.

The new state flexibility — endorsed by the Bush administration, which wanted to expand it to all 50 states — drew intense opposition from Democrats and social welfare groups.

Debate now moves to the Senate, which expects to produce its Head Start bill by month’s end. It’s not clear whether major provisions of the House bill will survive in the Senate.

LOS ANGELES

At least 24 released since molestation law struck down

At least 24 convicted sex offenders have been released from prison in the month since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a California law that made it easier to prosecute child molesters, a newspaper reported Thursday.

A Los Angeles Times survey of corrections records statewide found those freed so far range from a minister convicted of molesting his two daughters to a karate instructor who pleaded no contest to lewd conduct with his niece and a boy.

Prosecutors expect to eventually release hundreds of prisoners in response to the June 26 ruling.

While the most high-profile cases involve Roman Catholic priests, an estimated 800 people had been charged under the 1994 law that erased the statute of limitations in decades-old molestation cases.

It is not yet clear how many were convicted or pleaded guilty, and exactly how many are still behind bars.