Nevada

About 2,000 travelers stranded at airport

Hundreds of stranded passengers awaited flights out of Reno-Tahoe International Airport on Sunday, a day after a snowstorm and an equipment malfunction forced dozens of flights to be canceled or delayed.

About 2,000 people were unable to book flights out of the city until today or Tuesday because most flights were already full on the airport’s busiest day of the year, airport spokesman Brian Kulpin said.

The airport traditionally handles 11,000 passengers on the Sunday after Thanksgiving.

At nearby Lake Tahoe and elsewhere in the Sierra Nevada, a winter storm system that moved in from the Northwest dumped up to 18 inches of snow.

Georgia

Base readies for major troop expansion

Nearly 6,000 new soldiers are set to move to Fort Benning, a western Georgia Army post, which is already a major training center for recruits, airborne troops, infantry soldiers, officers and reservists preparing for combat in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Thousands more may come when the United States starts closing European bases and brings home 60,000 soldiers and families, officials say.

Fort Benning is already home to the 4,000-member 3rd Brigade of the 3rd Infantry Division, which helped lead the charge into Iraq in 2003.

Now the fort is slated to get a new group of 3,800 light-infantry soldiers who will be members of the 5th Brigade, 25th Infantry Division. Another 1,690 soldiers will be added to handle the post’s additional training responsibilities and to expand existing units.

Washington, D.C.

Bush aid sought on intelligence bill

The fate of an overhaul of U.S. intelligence agencies rests with President Bush, who must exert more pressure on holdout Republicans if he wants compromise legislation to pass this year, a lead Senate negotiator said Sunday.

“If the president of the United States wants this bill, as commander in chief in the middle of a war, I cannot believe Republicans in the House are going to stop him from getting it,” said Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., on ABC’s “This Week.”

But two powerful opponents of the deal, GOP Reps. Duncan Hunter of California and James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin, are showing no signs of wavering on a measure intended to put in place recommendations from the 9-11 commission.

Hunter, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, has expressed concerns that the intelligence realignment could interfere with the military chain of command.

Washington, D.C.

Poll: Justices need retirement mandate

Six in 10 Americans say there should be a mandatory retirement age for Supreme Court justices, according to an Associated Press poll.

The survey found public support for an idea that has arisen periodically in Congress without ever making headway.

Only one of the nine current justices is younger than 65. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, 80, appointed to the court by President Nixon, has thyroid cancer. In the survey, people were asked if they could identify what job Rehnquist held, and 59 percent did not know.