Washington, D.C.

Halloween candy gets FDA warning

With Halloween approaching, federal health officials on Friday warned that lollipops labeled “Jelly Candy Pops Sour Zip Kids” could contain enough egg protein to cause serious injury to people severely allergic to eggs.

The individually wrapped candies are gelatin-based and have frosting resembling ghosts, monsters and other Halloween figures.

The product was imported from China by Morris National Inc. of Azusa, Calif., and was distributed nationwide through Tuesday Morning stores, the the Food and Drug Administration said.

Florida

Brain-damaged woman’s feeding to continue

A feeding tube for a severely brain-damaged woman can’t be removed until appeals are exhausted in her parents’ fight to have a new trial in the long-running right-to-die case, a judge ruled Friday in Tampa.

An attorney for Schiavo’s husband, Michael, said the order could mean months and possibly years of delay and he would seek to have it overturned.

“What everyone with any common sense should realize is this case has been mulled over time and time again,” attorney George Felos said. “To permit endless stays for endless appeals is simply a miscarriage of justice.”

Terri Schiavo collapsed from a chemical imbalance due to an eating disorder 14 years ago and left no written directive.

A second court stay is in effect until Nov. 29, while Gov. Jeb Bush appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court over whether he overstepped his authority in pushing through a state law that reconnected Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube last year.

Salt Lake City

Husband enters plea in death of wife

A man pleaded not guilty Friday to first-degree murder in the death of his wife, whose remains were found in a landfill weeks after her disappearance.

The judge set Mark Hacking’s trial for April 18. Prosecutors are not seeking the death penalty.

Authorities believe Lori Hacking, 27, was killed July 19 after learning her husband wasn’t enrolled in medical school in North Carolina, though they were arranging to move there. It was among a series of deceptions Mark Hacking had perpetuated over several years, police say.

The victim’s brother, Paul Soares, sent a letter to Hacking in jail, urging him to “be a man” and plead guilty, according to a newspaper story Friday.

“Save your family the grief and cost of this attorney. Just plead guilty for once. Just tell the truth. Take responsibility for your actions,” Soares wrote, according to the Deseret Morning News.

Philadelphia

Harassment claimed at hands of Quakers

Would a Quaker group resort to harassing and shunning an employee after learning she’d had an affair with former President Bill Clinton?

Would they suggest she date a 91-year-old Quaker board member, or place photos of “elderly and scantily-clad men” on her desk? Steal her mail, vandalize her car and say she’d be “better off if she learned Quaker ways”?

That’s what Myra Belle “Sally” Miller claims happened to her at the hands of the West Chester Meeting of Friends. Miller on Thursday sued the Quaker organization and its school in federal court in Philadelphia, alleging sexual and religious harassment, discrimination and retaliation.

Miller, who is not a Quaker, served as the group’s director of fund-raising and public relations between 2001 and last Nov. 8, when she was fired, the suit said.

It also states she “was involved in a sexual relationship with former President William Jefferson Clinton” before taking the job. It gives no clue as to when the alleged affair took place.

Liberia

Muslim-Christian violence flares

Violence between Muslims and Christians engulfed Liberia’s war-battered capital Friday, with machete-wielding crowds rampaging through the streets and U.N. peacekeepers firing warning shots and tear gas to restore order amid burned mosques and churches.

At least three people were killed — inadvertently crushed under the wheels of a U.N. armored vehicle trying to disperse a crowd, a policeman said. The number of dead and wounded elsewhere was unclear, with some residents reporting up to five dead. There was no official count.

The U.N. special envoy to Liberia, Jacques Klein, said U.N. troops and Liberian police detained 168 people, and peacekeepers were ordered to patrol through the night.

Klein, an American, said he had ordered peacekeepers to “react with maximum force, and this means shoot to kill.”

Germany

Gay rights expanded

German lawmakers expanded the rights of same-sex couples Friday, allowing registered domestic partners to adopt each other’s children and making rules on splitting up and alimony similar to those for heterosexual marriages.

Parliament’s lower house passed the changes drafted by Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s center-left government over the objections of opposition conservatives.

“This is a good day for gays and lesbians,” Green Party lawmaker Volker Beck told his colleagues. “We are making another step on the long road to equal rights.”

Before registering their partnership, gay couples will be able to get engaged as heterosexuals do, a step granting certain legal rights in Germany, such as the right not to testify against one’s partner in court.

Afghanistan

Seven arrested in kidnapping case

Police detained seven suspects for questioning in the kidnapping of three U.N. election workers in the Afghan capital, officials said Friday. But investigators appeared no closer to establishing whether Taliban-linked militants or criminals were responsible for the abductions.

Foreign aid workers were told to restrict their movements around Kabul. Some still ventured out around the city.

Officials said no demands have been received for the release of the victims, who were snatched from their marked U.N. vehicle by about five armed men midday Thursday.

Ohio

Court blocks GOP on registration issue

A federal appeals court Friday blocked the Republicans from contesting more than 20,000 voter registrations in Ohio before Election Day.

The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati turned down several GOP appeals of a lower court judge’s order that stopped hearings on the contested registrations.

The action could mean the hearings might never take place, since they must be held within two days of the election, the Republicans said. The lower court judge was considering whether to make her temporary order permanent, and decided to resume taking evidence Monday.

Republicans say some of the voter registrations may be fraudulent, because mail sent to some of the new voters came back undelivered. Democrats say the GOP is trying to keep poor and minorities, who move more often, from voting.

Washington, D.C.

Bush campaign drops song after complaint

The Bush campaign said Friday it would stop using the 1970’s hit “Still the One” at campaign rallies after the songwriter, no fan of the president, claimed the Republicans never got permission.

John Hall, a former Democratic county legislator in upstate New York, co-wrote the song and recorded it with his band Orleans in 1976. He complained Friday morning about the campaign’s use of the song at the president’s events.

The cheery pop tune opened and ended a Bush campaign rally in New Hampshire Friday, then was to have vanished from the political playlist.

Bush campaign spokeswoman Nicolle Devenish said the song had been included in a catalog of music that the campaign’s licensing company used to provide music for events.

North Carolina

Five in family dead in murder-suicide

A man who was charged this month with raping and kidnapping his estranged wife apparently shot her and three family members to death in separate houses, then killed himself, authorities said Friday.

The body of David Edward Wyzanowski, 37, and a woman believed to be his wife, Michelle, 31, were found inside a burning house on Thursday near Marshville after a passer-by saw smoke coming from the home, Union County Sheriff Eddie Cathey said. A 22-caliber rifle was found with the bodies.

Several hours later, investigators went to a mobile home 10 miles away where relatives of Michelle Wyzanowski lived, and found the bodies of three men.

Michelle Wyzanowski’s children were found unharmed in an outbuilding of the family home, Cathey said. The boy and three girls were being cared for by social workers.

Texas

Governor won’t sign pro-U.N. proclamation

An international incident of sorts has broken out in Texas, after Gov. Rick Perry rejected President Bush’s request that the nation’s governors sign a proclamation honoring the United Nations.

Perry believes the United Nations has not shown enough support for the United States’ “efforts to bring freedom and democracy to the world,” Kathy Walt, the Republican governor’s press secretary, said Friday. Asked if she could offer specifics, she said: “I’m not going to. That is the extent of our statement.”

The platform of the Texas Republican Party calls for the United States to rescind its membership in the United Nations and evict the organization from New York.

Suzanne DiMaggio, executive director of Global Policy Progress at the United Nations Association in New York, said this is the first time a governor has rejected such a proclamation, and called his decision “profoundly misplaced and short-sighted.”

Washington, D.C.

Parents taken to court to force immunizations

Dozens of parents were charged with misdemeanor truancy in the nation’s capital on Friday after their children missed school because they lacked required immunizations. The charges carry possible jail time and fines.

The capital’s attorney general’s office summoned 41 parents to District of Columbia Superior Court after school officials turned over the names of children kept out of class for lack of up-to-date immunization records. Several parents alleged that schools had lost their records or filed them late.

Assistant Atty. Gen. Rachele Gaines said parents had plenty of warning to ensure their children had required vaccinations on record.

She said city prosecutors relied on the district’s school system to supply the names of students missing school because they weren’t immunized. Last year the school system provided no names, she said, but in 2002 they prosecuted another group of parents.

“We’re trying to avoid going through this again next year,” Gaines said.

Washington, D.C.

FDA approves drug for early breast cancer

The Food and Drug Administration agreed Friday to allow a drug currently used against advanced breast cancer to be prescribed to prevent the disease from recurring in women who have been treated for early forms of the disease.

The agency approved the new use for letrozole, which can now be prescribed for postmenopausal women who have finished five years of treatment with tamoxifen.

Novartis Pharmaceuticals sells the drug under the name Femara. The daily tablet costs about $210 a month.

The drug offers new therapy to about 100,000 each year who complete tamoxifen treatment for breast cancer, said Dr. Diane Young, a Novartis vice president.

A clinical study of the drug showed it cut the risk of recurrence by half.

Tamoxifen, which blocks estrogen from connecting to cells, is recommended after early breast cancer is treated with surgery and chemotherapy. After five years or so the body can become resistant, and until now, no follow-up treatment has been available.