New Jersey

Snowstorm strikes East late in season

A late-winter snowstorm blew out of the Midwest and into the Northeast on Tuesday, making driving treacherous and closing schools just four days before the start of spring.

Up to 10 inches of snow was forecast overnight in parts of Ohio, Connecticut and Pennsylvania, and New Jersey was expecting 9 inches. A foot of snow was possible in upstate New York and Massachusetts.

Wet roads were blamed for numerous highway crashes, including separate accidents that killed two people in Pennsylvania. Ohio police were investigating whether snow contributed to a crash that killed two other people when their car swerved into the path of a truck near Akron.

As the storm was gathering strength, a record 18 inches fell Monday around Sioux City, Iowa. Illinois, Indiana and Michigan also picked up a few inches.

Washington, D.C.

Ethics office clears Interior official

The Office of Government Ethics said the Interior Department’s No. 2 official, Steven Griles, did not appear to violate ethics rules by arranging meetings between Interior officials and his former lobbying clients and partners.

The office, after reviewing an 18-month investigation by the Interior Department’s inspector general, said it found no ethics violations by Griles in the department’s awarding of more than $1.6 million in contracts in 2001 and 2002 to Advanced Power Technologies Inc., a former client.

Interior Department Inspector General Earl Devaney said Griles’ behavior was the latest case of an Interior official failing to consider perceived impropriety in his actions. He also called the department’s underfunded ethics office “a train wreck waiting to happen.”

Interior Secretary Gale Norton and Republicans in Congress said the report cleared Griles of any wrongdoing

Washington, D.C.

Teen’s cancer research tops science contest

A Massachusetts teenager who created a faster way to diagnose cancer won the top prize Tuesday in a national contest for young scientists.

Herbert Mason Hedberg, 17, who attends North Attleboro High School, experimented with the telomerase enzyme found in cancer cells for his Intel Science Talent Search entry. He found a way to screen for telomerase inhibitors and rank their potency in suppressing tumors.

Hedberg took an interest in the topic at a time when his grandmother was undergoing cancer treatment. Now the aspiring physician-scientist has a $100,000 college scholarship.

All the other top 10 finishers won scholarships worth at least $20,000.

Other winners were from Georgia, Oregon, Virginia, New York, Maryland, Indiana and Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C.

Judge says courts overworked, need funds

Federal courts are swamped, partly because of Bush administration get-tough-on-crime policies that lead to more trials, the head of a federal judges’ group said Tuesday.

Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Carolyn Dineen King singled out drug and immigration prosecutions along the U.S.-Mexican border and Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft’s order last year that federal prosecutors should seek the severest charges and penalties.

Federal spending has not come close to keeping pace with the increase in caseloads prompted by decisions like those, King said after a meeting of the policy-setting Judicial Conference of the United States, for which she is chairwoman.

“More trials take place because of that, more prosecutions ensue because of their policies,” King said. “Our criminal caseload keeps going up, but our resources go down every year.”