Boston

Archdiocese reverses church closure

After months of resistance and round-the-clock vigils at several churches, archdiocese officials Tuesday reversed a decision to close one parish and will re-evaluate four others to determine whether one should close.

Archbishop Sean P. O’Malley’s decision to shutter or consolidate 83 churches by year’s end came in response to declining attendance, a shortage of priests and financial pressure caused in part by the clergy sex abuse crisis.

O’Malley “is no longer listening to the old guard, and instead is putting in place mechanisms himself to be able to hear from leaders of the laity and members of the parishes,” said John Hynes of Voice of the Faithful, a lay Catholic reform group.

Houston

Andrea Yates appealing murder verdict

Andrea Yates’ murder convictions for drowning her children should be overturned because the state’s expert witness gave false testimony about working on a nonexistent episode of “Law and Order,” her attorneys told a state appeals court Tuesday.

Yates was sentenced to life in prison in the 2001 deaths of three of her children after jurors rejected her insanity defense.

Yates’ attorney Troy McKinney focused on witness Park Dietz, who said he “told a whopper of a falsehood” when he said he consulted on a “Law and Order” episode about a woman found innocent by reason of insanity for drowning her children. No such episode existed.

Dietz testified the episode aired shortly before the drownings, and testimony indicated Yates was a viewer of the series.

Washington

Democrats’ recount lawsuit rejected

The state Supreme Court on Tuesday unanimously rejected the Democratic Party’s request that previously rejected absentee and provisional ballots be included in the hand recount of Washington state’s contested governor’s race.

Republican Dino Rossi won the Nov. 2 election by 261 votes and had a 42-vote lead over Democrat Christine Gregoire after the first, machine recount.

In a written opinion, the court said that under Washington law, “ballots are to be ‘retabulated’ only if they have been previously counted or tallied” — excluding those that had been disqualified by canvassing boards.

The decision does not affect the 561 uncounted ballots in King County that were discovered Sunday to have been wrongly rejected. Those ballots go to a canvassing board today for verification and could tip the delicate balance of the election toward Gregoire.

Indiana

Muslim scholar resigns from Notre Dame job

A Muslim scholar whose work visa was abruptly revoked after he was hired by the University of Notre Dame said Tuesday he had resigned his appointment.

“I’m abandoning the idea of moving to the United States,” Tariq Ramadan told The Associated Press in Geneva. “I want to maintain my dignity.”

Ramadan notified the university Monday, citing the stress on him and his family from the uncertainty of their situation, said R. Scott Appleby, director of Notre Dame’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies.

Ramadan, a Swiss citizen, was barred from working in the United States in August just days before he was to begin teaching at Notre Dame. The Department of Homeland Security cited security concerns but released no specifics.

Ramadan said Tuesday there was nothing in his past to justify the ban and demanded that U.S. authorities give details of its investigation.

San Diego

Color-coded alerts need review, Ridge says

Outgoing Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said Tuesday that the government should reconsider how it warns people about security threats, conceding that its color-coded scale had invited “questions and even occasional derision.”

Ridge’s remarks came at a meeting of the Homeland Security Advisory Council — created to advise the secretary on how to run the sprawling new department.

Ridge, who plans to step down after President Bush names a successor, defended the color-coded warnings, but said the public might want more specifics when the threat level is changed.

“I think the system is here to stay,” he told reporters. “I just think that we need clearly to take a look at what kind of information do we need to give to the public.”

The warning system assigns red, orange, yellow, blue and green, in descending order of risk, but it has sowed confusion since being adopted in 2002.

Florida

Mother arrested in 4-year-old’s death

A woman was arrested on child abuse charges Tuesday after her 4-year-old daughter was found dead in a filthy motel room where they lived with the woman’s husband and five other children, authorities said.

The two adults had earlier pleaded no contest to charges stemming from his use of a belt to beat at least two children, including the girl who died, officials said. The Department of Children & Families briefly removed the two from the parents’ custody, but the welfare agency ended its supervision more than a year ago.