Kansas

Legal briefs posted on state evolution debate

The three members of the Kansas State Board of Education’s science subcommittee now have two lengthy legal briefs on evolution to review as they prepare their recommendations.

The lawyers who represented both sides of the evolution debate at the state board’s hearings last month submitted their written arguments late last week. The Department of Education posted both briefs on the science standards page of its Web site, www.ksde.org, late Wednesday.

The three board members who oversaw the four-day hearings – Steve Abrams, Kathy Martin and Connie Morris – will report to the full board June 14-15.

Detroit

Josephine Clay Ford dies at age 81

Josephine Clay Ford, a leading philanthropist and the only granddaughter of automotive pioneer Henry Ford, died Wednesday. She was 81.

Ford’s death was announced in an e-mail to Ford Motor Co. employees by company Chairman Bill Ford Jr., a nephew.

Jon Pepper, a company spokesman, said Josephine Ford, who lived in suburban Grosse Pointe Farms, had been ill several weeks and died of natural causes at Henry Ford Hospital.

At the time of her death, Ford owned more than 13 million shares of Ford Motor stock – about 18 percent of the stock held exclusively by Ford family members.

The Detroit Institute of Arts and the Josephine Ford Cancer Center were among recipients of millions from “Dody” Ford and the foundation she established with her late husband.

Chicago

FBI removes casket of civil rights era victim

Nearly 50 years after Emmett Till’s mutilated body was found in a Mississippi river, federal investigators Wednesday unearthed the Chicago teen’s casket in hopes of finding clues to his slaying, a flashpoint in the civil rights era.

Mississippi prosecutors and the FBI have said DNA or other evidence might help determine who killed the black 14-year-old and whether anyone still alive should be prosecuted.

Till’s body was found by fishermen in the Tallahatchie River in August 1955, three days after he was abducted from his uncle’s home in Money, Miss., reportedly for whistling at a white woman.

FBI agents Wednesday loaded the concrete vault containing Till’s casket onto a flatbed truck and took to the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office in Chicago for an autopsy. None was ever performed.

Two white men charged with the murder – store owner Roy Bryant and his half brother J.W. Milam – were acquitted by an all-white jury. The two, now dead, later confessed to beating and shooting Till.

Washington, D.C.

Internet group approves “xxx” Web addresses

The Internet’s primary oversight body approved a plan Wednesday to create a virtual red-light district, setting the stage for pornographic Web sites to use new addresses ending in “xxx.”

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers said it would begin negotiations with ICM Registry Inc., run by British businessman Stuart Lawley, to iron out technical issues and prices for the new Web addresses.

Adult-oriented sites, a $12 billion industry, probably could begin buying “xxx” addresses as early as fall or winter depending on ICM’s plans, ICANN spokesman Kieran Baker said. The regulatory group also recently approved addresses ending in “jobs” and “travel.”

ICM contends the “xxx” Web addresses, which it plans to sell for $60 a year, will protect children from online smut if adult sites voluntarily adopt the suffix so filtering software used by families can more effectively block access to those sites. The $60 price is roughly ten times higher than prices other companies charge for dot-com names.