Florida

Family begs for return of missing 9-year-old

The family of a 9-year-old girl who disappeared from her bedroom pleaded for her return Friday, calling her an “angel” who needs to be home.

The father and grandparents of Jessica Marie Lunsford cried as they described a girl who they say would never run away.

More than 100 police and volunteers, with help from bloodhounds and helicopters, searched the Homosassa area about 60 miles north of Tampa. The physical search was suspended when darkness fell.

Jessica lives in the house with her father and his parents. Her father told authorities he had returned Thursday morning from a girlfriend’s home and was getting ready for work when he realized his daughter’s alarm clock was sounding and she wasn’t there.

Mark Lunsford said his daughter had had little contact with her mother, who Dawsy said had been located in Ohio and was being interviewed by the FBI. Michael Brooks, an FBI spokesman in Cincinnati, would not comment on what the FBI discussed with Angela Bryant but said she had not been arrested or detained.

Washington, D.C.

Pentagon IDs remains of Korean War pilot

Closing a curious chapter of Korean War history, the Pentagon announced Friday it had identified the remains of an Air Force pilot whose jet crashed on Chinese territory after being shot down during a dogfight with a Russian flying for North Korea.

The case puts a spotlight on a Russian role in the 1950-53 Korean War that was kept quiet for decades and helped feed speculation inside the American government that the Russians had attempted to capture U.S. pilots to exploit them for intelligence purposes.

Capt. Troy “Gordie” Cope, of Norfolk, Ark., was piloting what was then the Air Force’s best fighter, the F-86 Sabre, on Sept. 16, 1952, when he encountered MiG-15 fighters — purportedly North Korean but flown by Russians — over the Yalu River that separates North Korea from China. Cope, 28, was shot down and never seen again.

Cope was among 31 F-86 pilots lost and unaccounted for during the Korean War.

Washington, D.C.

Nonprofit groups fight campaign finance plan

Nonprofit groups including the Sierra Club and League of Conservation Voters are opposing legislation that would place new restrictions on spending by partisan interest groups in congressional or presidential elections.

Acting as an alliance called the Coalition to Protect Independent Political Speech, the half-dozen groups sent an e-mail Friday urging other nonprofits to join them in writing letters to Congress against the proposal.

The legislation would place tax-exempt partisan groups known as 527s under the same strict fund-raising and spending limits that apply to political action committees.

In addition to the Sierra Club and the League of Conservation Voters, the coalition includes NARAL Pro-Choice America; OMB Watch, which bills itself as a watchdog group seeking greater government openness; the liberal Alliance for Justice, which keeps an eye on judicial nominees, and People for the American Way.

New Orleans

Scientists reassemble Israeli astronaut’s notes

A small heap of paper that survived the fiery disintegration of space shuttle Columbia, a 38-mile fall to Earth and two months of exposure to rain and sun in a Texas field has been painstakingly restored by forensic scientists, yielding the flight diary and notes of Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon.

Scientists used computer image-enhancement technology and infrared light to read the charred and tattered pages and piece some of them together like jigsaw puzzles.

Not everything could be deciphered. But Sharon Brown, the Israeli police document examiner who pieced the material together, said she was amazed that the metal-ring cardboard-bound notebook had even survived.

She would not disclose any personal observations by the astronaut, one of the seven crewmen killed when the shuttle broke apart in February 2003. But the pages included a list of topics Ramon planned to talk about during broadcasts from space, and the carefully copied down text of the Sabbath kiddush, the blessing for wine.

Washington, D.C.

Poll finds ambivalence on prescription drugs

By an overwhelming majority, Americans believe prescription drugs significantly improve their health and quality of life, but almost as many say the companies that make them put their own profits ahead of the well-being of consumers, according to a new poll released Friday.

The survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 78 percent of adults say prescription drugs make a “big difference” in people’s lives, and 91 percent believe drug companies contribute significantly to society by researching and developing new drugs.

But 70 percent think the pharmaceutical companies that produce them are more concerned “about making profits” than developing new drugs, according to the survey.

The poll also found that in 2004, a majority of Americans said for the first time that drug companies overall do a “bad job” of serving their customers. In 1997, when the survey began, 79 percent of those polled said that drug companies did a “good job” for consumers.

New Orleans

Judge blocks prayer before school meetings

Congress and legislatures can open their sessions with prayers, but a federal judge ruled Friday that school boards do not have the same leeway.

Ruling in a lawsuit brought by a parent against a southeastern Louisiana school system, Judge Ginger Berrigan said school-sponsored prayers in classes or at other school functions had long been prohibited as a violation of First Amendment guarantees against government-established religion.

School boards are integral parts of school systems, she said.

School children whose faiths are different from the majority of students are vulnerable to peer pressure and feelings of isolation, Berrigan wrote.

Chris Moody, a lawyer for the school board, said an appeal was likely. An appeal would go to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, which Moody noted has allowed prayer at graduation ceremonies.

The decision was the latest development in a long legal battle over prayer at school functions in Tangipahoa.