Washington, D.C.

Navy finds no evidence Iraqis ever had missing pilot

Investigations in Iraq since the fall of Baghdad have found no evidence that missing Navy pilot Michael Scott Speicher was held in captivity after being shot down on the first night of the 1991 Gulf War, the Navy’s top admiral said Tuesday.

U.S. officials have been interrogating Iraqis and searching throughout the country for evidence of Speicher’s fate since the regime of Saddam Hussein was toppled by U.S. forces in early April last year.

Despite having found no evidence that the Iraqis captured Speicher, the Navy is sticking to its position, declared publicly in October 2002, that Speicher, who would now be 43, is “missing-captured,” Clark said.

Speicher’s family lived in the Kansas City area and moved to Florida when he was a teenager.

New York

Mayor charged for marrying same-sex couples

The New Paltz mayor was charged Tuesday with 19 criminal counts for performing weddings for gay couples, an act of defiance that thrust the small community into the center of the debate about same-sex marriage.

Jason West was charged with solemnizing marriages for couples who had no licenses, a misdemeanor under the domestic relations law, according to Ulster County Dist. Atty. Donald Williams.

Although West could face a maximum penalty of a year in jail, the prosecutor said a jail term wasn’t being contemplated at this point.

The 26-year-old Green Party mayor said he would plead innocent at his court hearing today.

Vermont

Killington residents endorse plan to join New Hampshire

Voting with a thunderous “aye,” Killington residents endorsed a plan Tuesday for this ski-resort town to secede from Vermont and become a part of New Hampshire instead.

The overwhelming voice vote opened the next chapter in what could be a long and costly push to join New Hampshire, 25 miles to the east.

Ultimately, the vote could prove to be only symbolic. State lawmakers in New Hampshire and Vermont will have the final say. And Vermont legislators said secession probably would be voted down.

The main source of discontent is Vermont’s new system of financing education, adopted in 1997 on orders from the state Supreme Court.

Beijing

Communist China moves to protect property rights

Communist China is changing its constitution to embrace the most basic tenet of capitalism, protecting private property rights for the first time since the 1949 revolution.

China’s parliament is meeting in an annual session starting Friday to endorse the change, already approved by Communist Party leaders who tout privatization as a way to continue the country’s economic revolution and help tens of millions of poor Chinese.

It will bring China’s legal framework in line with its market-oriented ambitions by providing a constitutional guarantee for entrepreneurs, once considered communism’s enemy but now pivotal in generating jobs.