Texas

Missing student found after seven years

A Texas A&M University student who had been feared murdered after disappearing nearly seven years ago has been found alive and working in Kentucky, according to authorities.

Brandi Stahr went missing in October 1998 from Bryan, and police spent hours searching for her body in wooded areas. They questioned a serial rapist and murderer about her just hours before he was executed last year.

But a telephone tip led investigators to Florence, Ky., where Stahr has been working for the last five years at a Sam’s Club, said Texas Ranger Frank Malinak.

Stahr, 27, hid from her family after she and her mother, Ann Dickenson, got into an argument over bad grades she received during her sophomore year and her family stopped paying for school.

Washington, D.C.

Senator: Detainee site should be shut down

A leading Senate Democrat said Sunday the United States needed to move toward shutting down the military prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

“This has become the greatest propaganda tool that exists for recruiting of terrorists around the world. And it is unnecessary to be in that position,” said Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del.

A Pentagon report released Friday detailed incidents in which U.S. guards at Guantanamo desecrated the Quran. Last month, Amnesty International called the detention center for terror suspects “the gulag of our time,” a charge Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld dismissed as “reprehensible.”

The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, GOP Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, plans hearings this month on the treatment of foreign terrorism suspects at the prison camp.

Atlanta

Number of black Scouts remains in dispute

A civil rights group official on Sunday dismissed a Boy Scouts audit of the number of blacks participating in an inner city youth program, saying the figures still are unrealistic.

Joseph Beasley of the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition said that although the Atlanta Area Council released an audit last week claiming more than 5,300 black Boy Scouts were registered in the Operation First Class program, fewer than 500 blacks are actually registered.

Beasley said he planned to challenge the council today to identify 1,000 inner city Scouts in the program.

The report was commissioned by the local Boy Scouts group after Beasley challenged the council’s claim in September that more than 10,000 boys – mainly blacks and other minorities – were in the program. The program provides the boys’ registration fee, books, uniforms and other opportunities, including scholarships for camp.

San Francisco

Gore urges action against global warming

Former Vice President Al Gore urged an assembly of international mayors to fight global warming Saturday, warning of catastrophic consequences for the planet if governments fail to act.

Gore, who helped draft the landmark Kyoto treaty on global warming that the United States never ratified, said that climate change already was melting glaciers, raising temperatures and altering weather patterns worldwide.

“We are witnessing a collision between our civilization and the earth, a transformation of the relationship between our species and the planet,” Gore warned.

Gore made an hourlong presentation as part of the United Nations World Environment Day Conference in San Francisco, the first U.S. city to host the event.

New Hampshire

Study touts benefits of eating apple peel

America’s most common apple also may be its most potent. Just don’t skimp on the skin.

A Canadian government study that measured the levels of antioxidants in eight varieties of apples found that Red Delicious contain the highest concentrations of the health enhancing chemicals.

And to get the most bang for your bite, be sure to eat the peel.

The skin of Red Delicious apples – the most common variety grown in the United States – contains over six times more antioxidant activity than the flesh, according to researchers at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada.

The study, to be published in the June 29 issue of Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, compared apple varieties popular in Canada, some of which are available only regionally in the United States.

New Jersey

80-year-old nabbed in prostitution case

Police made a surprising discovery when they busted the madam suspect of a prostitution ring called “August Playmates”: The woman running the show was an 80-year-old grandmother.

Authorities arrested Vera Tursi last month during a sting operation to crack down on prostitution rings posing as legal escort services. Police say Tursi ran the business from her two-bedroom apartment, taking $60 of every $160 she charged clients for one hour with a call girl.

Law enforcement officials say Tursi admitted her role in the business, saying she took it over a few years ago from her daughter, who had died. Police say Tursi told them she needed money to subsidize her Social Security checks.

San Francisco

Apple to switch to Intel chips in a snub to IBM

A stormy, decade-long relationship between Apple Computer Inc. and IBM is over, according to published reports.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs is expected to announce this morning at the company’s software developers conference in San Francisco that Apple will discontinue using microprocessor chips made by IBM in favor of Intel chips, according to CNET Networks Inc.’s News.com and The Wall Street Journal.

Officials from Apple, Intel Corp. and International Business Machines Corp. could not be reached Sunday.

For years, rumors of Apple’s wish to jump to Intel have been circulating. But two weeks ago, analysts were skeptical when The Wall Street Journal reported negotiations under way.