Seattle

Girlfriend, children set afire in automobile

A man doused his girlfriend and three small children with gasoline inside a car and set them on fire early Wednesday as he drove, authorities said. All five died after the car crashed in flames.

Residents reported hearing the crash and seeing two adults engulfed in flames, stumbling across a road near Bonny Lake, a small town east of Tacoma.

Antigone Monique Allen, 18, who had recently filed an assault complaint against the 24-year-old man, survived for about nine hours at a Seattle hospital, sheriff’s Detective Ed Troyer said. She managed to tell investigators what happened before she died.

Firefighters found the bodies of the children — a 6-month-old boy, 1 1/2-year-old boy and 2 1/2-year-old girl — in the back of the burned car, pictured above.

Washington, D.C.

Powell seeks amends with France

Secretary of State Colin Powell is reaching out again to France to try to overcome differences that were exacerbated by the U.S. war with Iraq.

“The values that pull France and the United States together are far more powerful than any problems that come along and will be surmounted,” Powell said at a ceremony.

The State Department is marking the start of a traveling exhibit of the Marshall Plan, the program that helped France and other European nations recover from World War II.

The exhibit, which also honors George C. Marshall, the Truman-era secretary of state who developed the massive U.S. assistance program in 1947, will be sent to American colleges and universities.

Washington, D.C.

House panel gives abortion foes victory

A House committee voted Wednesday to making it easier for hospitals, health insurers and others to refuse to provide or cover abortions.

The Republican-run House Appropriations Committee added the provision to a massive spending bill after abortion-rights lawmakers led by Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., concluded they lacked the votes to block it. The language would bar any of the bill’s funds from going to federal, state or local agencies that act against health care providers or insurers because they do not provide abortions, make abortion referrals or cover them.

The committee approved the overall bill by voice vote, sending it to the full House.

The fate of the abortion provision in the Senate is unclear. That chamber has long been more inclined toward abortion rights than the House.

Miami

Paper drops petition seeking e-mail identities

The Miami Herald has dropped its demand that Yahoo! reveal identities of three subscribers of the Internet provider who allegedly sent defamatory e-mails to the newspaper’s employees about their bosses.

The Herald filed for dismissal June 25 in circuit court in Miami, a month after seeking the identities.

Herald general counsel Robert Beatty would not say whether the paper learned the names.

“We’re very satisfied with the outcome,” he said Wednesday.

The Internet provider does not disclose personal information without a subscriber’s permission unless it is responding to a court order, among other reasons, according to its Web site.

Kenya

Food shortage declared

President Mwai Kibaki declared Kenya’s food shortage a national disaster Wednesday, saying some 3.3 million Kenyans needed emergency food assistance because of a widespread drought.

Kibaki said more than 60 percent of Kenya’s crops would fail this year.

“I appeal to both the local and international community to complement our efforts in combating the negative effects of this severe drought,” Kibaki said.

A U.N. report this week found that 1.8 million Kenyans need food aid in the next six months.

Kibaki’s call for help came one day after Britain’s ambassador suggested international aid could be cut off because of a resurgence in corruption in the East African nation.

British High Commissioner Edward Clay told British investors Tuesday that corruption had cost Kenya an estimated $192 million.

Moscow

Slain American’s family seeks investigation

The brothers of an American journalist gunned down on a Moscow street called on Russian authorities Wednesday to investigate the killing.

Michael and Peter Klebnikov made the statement hours before a service for their brother Paul, the editor of Forbes magazine’s Russian edition.

Klebnikov, 41, was shot Friday as he walked from his office to a subway station. The killing undermined the image that Russia was recovering from violence that broke out in the business world in the economic chaos of the post-Soviet 1990s.

“In such a high-profile incident, we think this is a wonderful opportunity for the Russian government to show the world that it has turned the corner,” Michael Klebnikov said.

Russian officials say they have made the investigation a priority.