Baltimore

Water taxi capsizes; four believed dead

A water taxi with 25 people aboard capsized Saturday in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor after a violent gust of wind struck the boat, leaving passengers frantically clinging to the overturned pontoon in frigid waters. Four people are believed to have died.

Rescuers said they saw up to a dozen passengers climbing across the bottom of the 36-foot pontoon after winds gusting up to 50 mph flipped the boat over. The water temperature was in the low 40s.

Twenty-two people were removed from the water, including one woman who died at a nearby hospital. Three people were missing, and Baltimore Fire Chief William Goodwin said officials did not expect to find any more survivors.

Naval reserve officers, stationed at a nearby center, saw the boat capsize about 1,000 yards from the shore and immediately rushed to the scene in rescue boats, jumping into the water and pulling about a dozen people from the water.

Goodwin remarked on the coincidence that the reservists saw the accident. “Had no one been looking, this tragedy would have been far more tragic than it was,” he said.

Washington, D.C.

Hearings proposed for Juarez slayings

The slayings of women in Ciudad Juarez over the last 10 years, increasingly seen as an embarrassment for Mexico’s government, are attracting serious attention from U.S. lawmakers, some of whom are calling for congressional hearings on the crimes.

During meetings in Crawford, Texas, that ended Saturday, “President Bush raised the issue during dinner, and President Fox talked about it again in the morning. It was certainly an issue of discussion, an issue of concern, real concern on both sides,” said a U.S. official present during the meetings.

Said Rep. Hilda Solis, D-Calif., “I think there is a movement in Washington that has grown tremendously over the last few months” to see the crimes solved.

Solis sponsored a congressional resolution in November that condemned the more than 320 killings and the lagging investigation.

Support for Solis’ resolution has grown from six members of the House to 78.

San Diego

Police allege teens planned to kill teacher

Two 14-year-old boys were arrested Friday on suspicion of plotting to gun down a female teacher who had flunked one of them. The murder plot allegedly was within minutes of being carried out.

The teens, whose names were not released, were arrested at Palm Middle School in suburban Lemon Grove, and a .25-caliber semi-automatic pistol they had hidden in a Chivas Regal sack was discovered in the bushes on campus, said Sheriff’s Lt. Dennis Ferons.

The two had hidden the loaded gun in a nearby park several days ago and then taken it to campus on Friday, Ferons said.

The plot, he said, was for one boy to don a ski mask and shoot the teacher in her classroom after school adjourned. The teacher is known for staying after school to help students. A ski mask was found in one boy’s backpack when the arrests were made at 3:30 p.m.

“It was within a half-hour of happening,” Ferons said.

San Francisco

Judge denies request for abortion records

Ruling that abortion records contain information that “women would not want to share,” a federal judge said that the Planned Parenthood Federation of America did not have to force affiliates to turn over patient files to the government.

The case stems from a battle about the Partial-Birth Abortion Act, which was passed by Congress last year.

The act, signed by President Bush last year, bars a procedure referred to by critics as partial-birth abortion and by medical organizations as “intact dilation and extraction.”

The law has been tentatively halted pending a trial scheduled for March 29. Abortion providers are expected to testify that such abortions can be medically necessary to prevent injury to women.

Federal attorneys want abortion doctors to make their point by referring to the medical files and asked the judge to allow them to review the medical records.

Nebraska

Buffett criticizes Bush’s tax cuts

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett accused the Bush administration Saturday of pursuing tax cuts that favor large corporations and wealthy individuals.

“If class warfare is being waged in America, my class is clearly winning,” Buffett said in Berkshire Hathaway Inc.’s annual report.

Except for 1983, the percentage of federal tax receipts from corporate income taxes last year was the lowest since data was first published in 1934, Buffett said.

“Tax breaks for corporations (and their investors, particularly large ones) were a major part of the administration’s 2002 and 2003 initiatives,” Buffett said.

Buffett said many large corporations now pay nothing close to the stated federal tax rate of 35 percent.

Buffett said in the report his investment company pays its taxes and is probably among the country’s top 10 taxpayers. The company will pay $3.3 billion in 2003 corporate income tax.