Maryland

Parking garage partially collapses

A six-story parking garage under construction at the National Institutes of Health partially collapsed Monday in Bethesda, killing a construction worker, authorities said.

Dogs and cranes had to be used to search for the victim, who was found on the fourth floor, said Pete Piringer, a spokesman for Montgomery County Fire and Rescue.

Part of the top two floors of the six-story garage collapsed about 9 a.m. The cause remained under investigation, but NIH officials said they believe a beam slipped and hit one of the floors, causing it to collapse onto the level below.

A dozen or more workers were trapped by the collapse, according to Piringer, and had to either be escorted out by firefighters or plucked to safety by a fire department cherry picker.

Construction on the garage began in September 2003. It was due to be finished in March.

Washington, D.C.

Historian, philosopher split humanities prize

An 80-year-old American historian, Jaroslav Pelikan, and a 91-year-old French philosopher, Paul Ricoeur, will share the $1 million Kluge prize, created last year to honor achievement in fields not covered by the Nobel prizes.

Pelikan, who lives in New Haven, Conn., has specialized in the story of Christianity from its beginnings to the present. He has written more than 30 books, using sources in nine languages and dealing with literary and musical as well as doctrinal aspects of religion.

Ricoeur has taught at Haverford College, Columbia and Yale universities, the University of Chicago and Louvain University in Belgium, as well as at the Sorbonne and other French institutions.

Orphaned in World War I, Ricoeur was drafted in World War II and was captured and spent most of the conflict as a prisoner of war in Germany. He was active in the French Socialist Party afterward.

The prize was established by John W. Kluge, chairman of the private sector advisory body of the Library of Congress. The first year’s prize, for 2003, went to Leszek Kolakowski, a Polish anti-communist philosopher.

PHILADELPHIA

Court upholds schools’ right to bar recruiters

A federal appeals court Monday barred the Defense Department from withholding funds from colleges and universities that deny access to military recruiters.

The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 that a federal law known as the Solomon Amendment infringes on the free speech rights of schools that have restricted on-campus recruiting because of the military’s ban on homosexuals.

Ruling in a lawsuit brought by students and professors at New Jersey law schools, the three-judge panel said that by threatening to withdraw federal funds from schools, the government is compelling them to take part in speech they do not agree with.

Similar lawsuits have been filed around the country, but Monday’s ruling represented the first time a court blocked the government from enforcing the law.

New York City

Elevator accident leaves one dead

A 76-year-old retired schoolteacher about to leave for a Caribbean vacation was killed when he fell while trying to get out of a freight elevator that was stalled between floors, police said.

Edward Helig and his wife were riding their Manhattan apartment building’s freight elevator with their luggage when the elevator stalled Sunday afternoon between the 14th and 15th floors, police said.

Helig tried to step out onto the 14th floor but slipped into the shaft instead.

Helig had been warned not to use the freight elevator without supervision, said Ilyse Fink, a spokeswoman at the city’s Department of Buildings.

It appeared it stalled because the safety gate had not been closed properly, she said.