Washington

Senator apologizesfor racial slur

A state senator apologized Monday for using a racial slur during an argument with another legislator, a blunder that prompted some black leaders to press for his resignation.

“I realize this has been very hurtful to members of the African-American community and for that I am truly sorry,” Republican Sen. Alex Deccio said on the Senate floor in Olympia. “I feel if the Rev. Martin Luther King were here today, he would accept my apology, so I’m asking you to do the same.”

Deccio, 81, used the slur Thursday during a heated argument with Rep. Tom Campbell, another Republican, about health insurance reforms.

He called Campbell a “n—– in the woodpile” — a slang phrase similar in meaning to “snake in the grass.” Both men are white.

Deccio said he instantly realized his mistake and apologized during the meeting. On Friday, he apologized in person to Democratic Sen. Rosa Franklin, Washington’s only black state senator.

Washington, D.C.

One killed, one injured in high school shooting

One student was killed and another wounded Monday in a shooting at a high school in the nation’s capital, city and school officials said.

James Richardson, 17, a student at Ballou High School, died after being shot several times in the chest, District of Columbia Police Chief Charles Ramsey said. An 18-year-old student suffered a minor graze wound to one leg and was hospitalized, Ramsey said.

No arrests have been made, said Ramsey, who blamed the shooting on a dispute between students that began sometime last week.

Everyone involved was believed to be a student at Ballou, he said.

Washington, D.C.

Gorilla census shows population rebound

For years, conservationists have been despairing about the fate of the famed mountain gorillas of Africa. Years of disease, hunting and war and social chaos among their human neighbors had caused the number of the endangered creatures to plummet, bringing them to the brink of extinction.

A new census has found that the number may have begun to rebound, according to the International Gorilla Conservation Program, a joint initiative of three groups — the World Wildlife Fund, the African Wildlife Foundation and Flora and Fauna International.

The first census of the gorillas since 1989, undertaken late last year and released last week, found a 17 percent increase in the population of mountain gorillas in the Virunga forests on the borders of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda and Uganda. A total of 380 gorillas were recorded, an increase of 56 from the 324 counted more than a decade earlier.

Combined with the results of a 2002 census of the world’s only other population of mountain gorillas, in Uganda’s Bwindi Impenetrable Forest National Park, the new count brings the total to at least 700.