WASHINGTON, D.C.

Few patients apply for early Medicare drug coverage

Far from the expected deluge, relatively few patients with cancer and other serious illnesses have applied for generous early Medicare prescription drug coverage.

The Bush administration was planning a lottery to determine who would get the 50,000 slots included in last year’s Medicare prescription drug law. Instead, just 6,364 people have applied for the head start on drug insurance for costly cancer medicines taken orally and self-injectable drugs for multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis and other diseases.

The Medicare Web site now advises: “There are still many enrollment slots available!”

Patient advocates and physicians blame the low enrollment on several problems: The government scared off some people by using the term lottery and hasn’t publicized the program enough. In addition, it came up with an intimidating application for people with debilitating, life-threatening illnesses.

Japan

Deserter suspect surrenders to U.S. military authorities

Accused U.S. Army deserter Charles Jenkins surrendered today at a U.S. military base near Tokyo to face charges that he left his army unit in 1965 and defected to North Korea.

Jenkins, 64, turned himself in at the U.S. Army’s Camp Zama accompanied by his Japanese wife and two daughters.

He saluted and stood at attention before entering the provost martial’s office to be put back on active duty as a sergeant.

“He’ll be treated with dignity and fairness, and he’s innocent until proven guilty,” said army spokesman Maj. John Amberg.

Jenkins is charged with defecting to the North, where he lived for 39 years, and faces a maximum sentence of life in prison if convicted. The Rich Square, N.C., native is widely expected to strike a plea bargain with military authorities in order to receive lighter punishment.

MOSCOW

Parliamentary commission to investigate school crisis

President Vladimir Putin agreed Friday to a parliamentary investigation of the bloody school hostage siege in southern Russia, less than a week after he reportedly dismissed the idea by saying it might turn into “a political show.”

The move by Putin seeks to deflect criticism after he had earlier ruled out a public probe of the standoff in Beslan, which Russia’s foreign minister said Friday was directed by Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev. The siege also has raised serious questions about security in Russia.

Russian officials have also repeatedly cast the military campaign in Chechnya as part of a war against international terrorism.

U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Friday that it was too soon to say whether al-Qaida played any role in the school attack, but he said there was “absolutely” a connection between rebels in Chechnya and the terror network.

NEW YORK City

Doctor: Twins may be walking by Christmas

Carl and Clarence Aguirre, the 2-year-old twins who were joined at the head until five weeks ago, should be walking by Christmas, their pediatrician says.

“That’s the promise I made to their mother, and it’s looking good,” Dr. Robert Marion said Thursday. “It could be Halloween, the way things are going.”

Marion visited with the boys as they returned to the Children’s Hospital at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx for a checkup. They were separated there Aug. 4, but were later moved to Blythedale Children’s Hospital in Valhalla for physical therapy.

Marion said the boys had shown no neurological impairments from the operation and vital signs were fine.

Above, the boys’ mother, Arlene Aguirre, left, holds Clarence as Evelyn Aguirre, the boys’ grandmother, manages Carl.

“They’re playing together a lot,” Arlene Aguirre said.

SALT LAKE CITY

NASA optimistic that capsule will yield data

NASA scientists said Friday they had recovered some critical pieces of the Genesis space capsule intact and were optimistic the wreckage would yield valuable information about the origins of the solar system.

“We should be able to meet many, if not all, of our science goals,” said physicist Roger C. Wiens of the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

The Genesis capsule spent 2 1/2 years gathering solar atoms, but crashed while returning to Earth on Wednesday. It cracked open like a clamshell, and badly damaged an inner canister containing disks that collected the atoms.

Scientists have been peering inside the canister with flashlights and mirrors. They were surprised to find some wafers fully intact, meaning the $264 million mission may not have been a total loss.

PHILADELPHIA

Judge throws out child porn-blocking law

A federal judge Friday threw out a Pennsylvania law requiring Internet service providers to block Web sites containing child pornography, saying the tools to do so also cause “massive suppression” of constitutionally protected material.

The 2002 law was aimed at forcing companies like America Online to block customers from viewing Web sites with sexually explicit images of children.

No one challenged the state’s right to stop child porn, which is already illegal under federal law. But lawyers for the Center for Democracy and Technology and the American Civil Liberties Union had argued that the filtering technology used to block such Web sites is too clumsy.

LOS ANGELES

Former student wants to marry Letourneau

A man who had two children with his former sixth-grade teacher said the two had been meeting daily since her release from prison last month and would like to marry.

Mary Kay Letourneau, 42, served 7 1/2 years in prison for child rape for her relationship with Vili Fualaau, who was 12 when their relationship began at a Seattle-area school.

“We still have the same feelings for each other, times forever,” Fualaau, now 21, said in an interview to air Wednesday on “The Larry Elder Show,” a newly syndicated program.

A judge last month granted Fualaau’s request to lift an order barring Letourneau from contacting him. He said he’s been “seeing her every day” since her release.

The couple’s daughters, ages 7 and 6, are in the custody of Fualaau’s mother. Fualaau said he would seek custody of them at some point.

WASHINGTON, D.C.

Officials search al-Qaida videotape for clues

U.S. intelligence officials are studying the latest video from Osama bin Laden’s top deputy to learn if the message is simply to rally al-Qaida’s faithful — or if it’s an indication of events to come.

The Central Intelligence Agency determined with a high degree of confidence Friday that the message was in fact from al-Qaida’s No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahri. The U.S. government has offered up to $25 million for information leading to his killing or capture.

An intelligence official speaking on condition of anonymity said government experts were examining numerous aspects of the recording, including whether it may be a precursor to an attack. However, the official cautioned that such a pattern holds true only occasionally.

New Mexico

Judge orders county to require voter ID at polls

A judge on Friday ordered a New Mexico county clerk to require new voters to present identification at the polls in November if they did not register at government offices.

State District Judge Charles C. Currier’s order for Chaves County was the latest development in a battle over voter identification requirements in New Mexico, a battleground state where Al Gore defeated President Bush by just 366 votes in 2000.

Currier’s ruling contradicts a decision issued earlier this week by an Albuquerque judge, who denied an injunction that sought to require all first-time voters statewide to show identification if they did not register in person at their county clerk’s office.

WASHINGTON, D.C.

Powell thinks bin Laden still alive, still a threat

Three years after the Sept. 11 attacks, Secretary of State Colin Powell said Friday he believed Osama bin Laden was still alive — although he has no proof — and thought his al-Qaida terror group remained a threat.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Powell said al-Qaida still had the capacity to rebuild itself and thus remains a threat, although he asserted it has been decimated by the detentions and killings of key leaders.

Of bin Laden — whose No. 2 deputy released a new videotape Thursday threatening the United States — Powell said: “We believe he is still alive. I can’t prove that. But he clearly is hiding as best he can. He is on the run. He is not popping up on television and he is not showing himself in a way that he could be captured.”

Connecticut

Blast topples church

A powerful blast leveled a decades-old Ukrainian church early Friday, shaking nearby buildings and tossing shards of glass and wood debris hundreds of feet. No injuries were reported.

The cause of the explosion at St. Mary’s Ukrainian Catholic Church in Colchester was not immediately clear. The brick building had an indoor propane tank for cooking, state police Sgt. J. Paul Vance said.

The explosion, just before 7 a.m., could be felt for miles.

Only some of the church’s A-frame structure remained. Pieces of wood and glass shards were strewn about the area. A small statue of the Virgin Mary remained intact at the edge of the rubble.

WASHINGTON, D.C.

FDA panel OKs giving drug to healthy children

A new Food and Drug Administration ethics panel said Friday the advancement of science outweighed the risks of giving a stimulant to healthy children as young as 9.

The 11-member Pediatric Ethics Subcommittee gathered for the first time to consider a proposal that would give a single 10 mg. dose of dextroamphetamine to 78 children. The study, led by Dr. Judith L. Rapoport, would use MRIs to reveal brain patterns as the children complete certain tasks.

Half the children in the study, all aged 9 to 18 years, already would have been diagnosed with ADHD. The study raised ethical concerns because half the participants would be healthy children.

NEW YORK City

Two police officers shot and killed in Brooklyn

Two police officers were shot and killed Friday night in the New York borough of Brooklyn, police said.

Police said the officers, whose identities were not released, were taking part in an investigation when they were fatally shot. They were pronounced dead at a hospital.

No arrests had been made as of late Friday night.

Nevada

Inmates asked about booby-trapped letters

Federal and state investigators questioned Nevada prison inmates Friday after at least 15 governors received letters rigged to catch fire when the envelope was opened.

The letters apparently did not contain writings but bore a return address from Nevada’s maximum-security Ely State Prison. In three cases, a match inside the envelope flared when the letter was opened, but no one was hurt.

The other letters were intercepted Thursday and Friday during screening or because of an alert issued by the Homeland Security Department.

The letters listed one or the other of two Ely inmates as the sender, but authorities are not sure if either prisoner was involved.