Salt Lake City

Clues about missing jogger redirect police to landfill

Mark Hacking directed a relative to give police new information about his wife’s disappearance that has police turning again to a municipal landfill, detectives said Sunday.

Authorities investigating the case were surprised by the family’s request that volunteers stop searching for Lori Hacking based on new details from her husband.

The statement released late Saturday by the families of Mark and Lori Hacking did not say what Mark Hacking had told them.

Authorities would only say that the relative provided “additional substantive new information,” said Detective Dwayne Baird. He declined to comment further.

Baird said police would renew a search at a municipal landfill.

South Carolina

First tropical storm of 2004 forming off of Charleston

The first named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season developed off the South Carolina coast Sunday as forecasters predicted Tropical Storm Alex would make landfall in North Carolina.

Alex’s center was about 90 miles south-southeast of Charleston, S.C., at 10 p.m. CDT. Maximum winds remained at 40 mph, forecasters said.

The storm had become better organized during the afternoon, prompting the National Hurricane Center to extend the tropical storm warning from Cape Hatteras, N.C., to the South Santee River, north of Charleston.

Ohio

Kerry talks about steel jobs

Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry told a crowd Sunday packed into a block of Main Street in Bowling Green that he would fight to prevent a flood of steel imports from taking more American jobs.

“The law is the law. You’re supposed to enforce the law,” Kerry said, referring to steps the president can take to stop foreign producers from dumping cheaper steel into markets.

President Bush imposed steep tariffs on steel imports in March 2002 to ease foreign competition and let the U.S. industry reorganize, but he reversed course in December to avoid a threatened trade war with the European Union.

At the same time, the White House retained a system to temporarily monitor imports.

Afghanistan

Ninety percent of electorate registered to vote

Nine out of 10 eligible Afghans have signed up for landmark October elections, the United Nations said Sunday, a resounding endorsement of a democratic experiment supposed to help Afghanistan turn its back on years of debilitating war.

Women and ethnic minorities are strongly represented among those registered for the first-ever direct vote for president. But parts of the south risk being left behind because of stepped-up attacks on election workers and Afghan and U.S. security forces.

First tallies since the eight-month registration drive began winding down Saturday show that 8.7 million of an estimated 9.8 million eligible voters have collected ID cards for the Oct. 9 election.