Briefly – Nation

Washington, D.C.

Bush to renominate 20 judicial candidates

Signaling that the highly partisan battle over judges will continue next year, the White House announced Thursday that President Bush will renominate 20 unconfirmed judicial candidates, including seven filibustered by Senate Democrats.

The president’s action sets the stage for a likely showdown about the filling of an expected vacancy on the Supreme Court and fuels speculation whether Republicans will take the drastic step of changing Senate rules to ban filibusters on judicial nominees.

Though the Republicans in the election expanded their majority in the Senate to 55, they still lack the 60 votes needed to end a filibuster, which Democrats have used to block 10 judicial nominees they consider unsuitable or too extreme.

A rule change that would require only a simple majority of 51 votes to stop a filibuster has been dubbed the “nuclear option,” because Democrats have vowed to block Bush’s legislative agenda and to paralyze the work of the Senate with procedural delays and obstacles.

Houston

Two convicted in deadly immigrant scheme

Two men were convicted Thursday for their roles in the nation’s deadliest human smuggling attempt — a journey that ended in the deaths of 19 illegal immigrants crammed in a sweltering tractor-trailer.

Victor Jesus Rodriguez and Fredy Giovanni Garcia-Tobar each faced 58 identical counts. They were found guilty of the most serious charge, conspiracy, and 19 counts of aiding in the transport of immigrants that results in death.

They could face life in prison when sentenced in March.

Federal prosecutors had accused the defendants of being members of a smuggling ring that stuffed a hot, airless tractor-trailer with more than 70 illegal immigrants and tried to transport them in May 2003 from south Texas to Houston.

The trailer was abandoned at a truck stop near Victoria, about 100 miles southwest of Houston, after the immigrants began succumbing to the heat, estimated at 173 degrees.

Seventeen immigrants were found dead inside the trailer. Two died later.

Washington, D.C.

Cancer research reveals clues about gray hair

Those annoying gray hairs that increasingly leer back from the bathroom mirror may have some value after all. Cancer researchers have developed a new explanation for graying hair that they hope also will shed light on the most dangerous type of skin cancer.

Melanoma is the malignant form of melanocytes, the cells that help color hair and skin, and it is particularly resistant to chemotherapy and radiation.

A team led by Dr. David E. Fisher of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston found that hair goes gray when melanocytes become depleted.

The scalp contains a reservoir of adult stem cells that provide a continuous supply of these color-making cells, they found. But as the body ages these cells become depleted and sometimes begin to develop in the wrong part of the hair follicle.

The research was published online Thursday by the journal Science.

Fisher suggested that people who get gray prematurely may have a gene mutation.

New York

Bowling alley to return Arafat’s investment

The CEO of a company that owns several U.S. bowling alleys, including a popular one in Greenwich Village, said Thursday it was severing ties with a group linked to Yasser Arafat and would return its $1.3 million investment.

The late Palestinian leader invested the money in New York-based Strike Holdings, owner of Bowlmor Lanes in Greenwich Village, through a holding company he created called Onyx Funds, according to Bloomberg Markets Magazine.

Zeid Masri, managing partner of SilverHaze Partners, said he invested the money in Strike Holdings for Onyx because he was a former classmate of Strike Holdings CEO Thomas Shannon.

The money was among $799 million in international investments by Arafat. Other holdings included $285 million in Orascom, an Egyptian cell-phone company, and $3.2 million in the U.S. software firm Simplexity.