Boston

Court to decide Puerto Rican elections

A federal appeals court ruled Wednesday that the Puerto Rico Supreme Court, not a federal judge on the island, has jurisdiction over disputed election ballots in the governor’s race.

The decision likely benefits Anibal Acevedo Vila, who supports keeping the island as a U.S. commonwealth, and with whom the Puerto Rico Supreme Court sided earlier in the dispute.

His opponent, former Gov. Pedro Rossello, an advocate of statehood for Puerto Rico, is contesting the validity of ballots that, if counted, would sway the election toward Acevedo Vila.

In Wednesday’s ruling, a three-judge panel of the 1st Circuit concluded that “it was an abuse of discretion for the District Court to exercise jurisdiction over this local election dispute.”

Tennessee

Al Gore’s mother dies

Pauline Gore, whose son Al became vice president and nearly captured the presidency, and whose husband had a long and distinguished career in Congress, died Wednesday. She was 92.

She had been weakened in recent years by strokes and a heart attack, and she died in at her home in Carthage.

Trained as a lawyer, Pauline Gore was a familiar figure on the campaign trails of her husband, Albert Gore Sr., and her son, former Vice President Al Gore.

She played a central role in shaping her husband’s campaign strategy. Gore Sr. was a liberal Democrat who served in the House from 1939 to 1953 and in the Senate from 1953 to 1970, and aspired to the presidency himself. He died in 1998.

“She was my father’s closest adviser,” the then-vice president said in 1999.

Cleveland

Court upholds arrest in Indian logo protest

Authorities did not violate anyone’s free speech rights when they arrested five people for burning an effigy of a Cleveland Indians logo that critics view as racist, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled Wednesday.

The 5-2 decision upheld Cleveland’s decision to arrest the protesters on Opening Day in 1998 after they torched a 3-foot effigy of Chief Wahoo outside the Indians’ stadium.

The protesters said the demonstration was legitimate free speech and compared it with constitutionally protected flag-burning. But the court ruled that the arrests were justified because the fire threatened the public’s safety.

Protester Vernon Bellecourt called the logo “a grinning bucktoothed idiotic effigy” whose red feather belittled the Indian symbol of a heroic warrior.

New Jersey

Airport screeners spot, then lose, fake bomb

Baggage screeners at Newark Liberty International Airport spotted, and then lost, a fake bomb planted in luggage by a supervisor during a training exercise.

Despite a search Tuesday night, the bag, containing a fake bomb complete with wires, a detonator and a clock, made it onto an Amsterdam-bound flight. It was recovered by airport security officials in Amsterdam when the flight landed.

“This really underscores the importance of the TSA’s ongoing training exercises,” said Ann Davis, a spokeswoman for the Transportation Security Administration. “At no time did the bag pose a threat, and at no time was anyone in danger.”

Earlier this month, French authorities lost a bag containing real explosives that were being used to train bomb-sniffing dogs. That led French authorities to prohibit using live explosives in future tests.