National and State News-Friday, March 16th

BOSTON (AP) - The number of troops being requested in Iraq is reportedly going up again. The Boston Globe says the commander of U-S forces in Iraq wants another Army combat aviation brigade of up to three-thousand troops. They would support the more than
26-thousand soldiers already set for deployment under the Bush administration buildup.

WASHINGTON (AP) - A probe into the firing of eight federal prosecutors is spilling into the White House. There are new questions about top political adviser Karl Rove's role. And
President Bush's top legal aides are supposed to tell Congress today whether high-level White House officials will be allowed to testify under oath.

CAMP SPRINGS, Md. (AP) - The stage is set for a major winter storm event from Maryland to Maine. After temperatures in the 80s yesterday in much of Virginia and the Carolinas, a cold front and a developing low off the Carolinas could gang up to dump a foot of snow on inland locations.

WASHINGTON (AP) - The head of the Army Corps of Engineers says problems with faulty drainage canal pumps in New Orleans have been pinpointed. Lieutenant General Carl Strock tells a Senate panel it'll all be fixed by the time the new hurricane season begins. Last year the defective pumps weren't needed.

UNDATED (AP) - Former baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn has died. He was 80. Kuhn oversaw the sport's transformation to a business of free agents with multi (m) million-dollar
contracts. He died after a short bout with pneumonia that led to respiratory failure.


PITTSBURGH (AP) - A preliminary hearing is scheduled today for a woman accused of shooting her husband dead in Pittsburgh 21 years ago. Diana Rader, who's now 62 years old, is accused of killing Raymond Marzoch of McKeesport in a parking garage in February 1986.

PHILADELPHIA (AP) - The F-B-I says an agent killed a drug suspect in Philadelphia because the agent thought the suspect was reaching for a weapon. A spokeswoman says a confidential informant was making a controlled drug purchase yesterday afternoon with undercover city police officers and F-B-I agents nearby. The drug dealers began beating the informant and when police and F-B-I agents rushed to help, the suspects fled. She says an F-B-I agent fired one shot when it appeared that one of the suspects was reaching for something. A gun was found near the car, but police haven't determined if the suspect was armed.

SCRANTON, Pa. (AP) - Hazleton Mayor Lou Barletta testified that violent crime spiked 60 percent in his city between 2003 and 2006. He says he called for a crackdown on illegal immigrants because residents were afraid to leave their homes. There were more than eight-thousand crimes in the city between 2001 and 2006. A lawyer from the American Civil Liberties Union confronted Barletta yesterday with statistics showing that illegal immigrants were responsible for less than one percent of them. Barletta says that doesn't matter. He says his budget is so tight that he doesn't have a dollar to spend on even one of them. Barletta is defending a law that imposes fines on landlords and employers who do business with illegal aliens in his city.

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) - State gambling regulators say they are easing their screening of applicants for slot-machine casinos jobs. They hope that will help Pennsylvania's fledgling gambling establishments fill jobs more quickly. the changes were announced yesterday at a public meeting of the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board. That's, two weeks after hearing complaints from casino executives that a strict, cumbersome and lengthy screening process
was making it difficult for them to fill some jobs. Gaming board officials said the changes will let people begin working earlier, but will not loosen safety measures designed to screen out career criminals or people with financial problems.

PHILADELPHIA (AP) - The chairman of the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board says a vote by the Philadelphia City Council on casino locations is illegal. The council voted unanimously to place a referendum on the spring primary ballot that, if passed, would limit where casinos
can be built. It would prohibit them within 15-hundred feet of homes, schools and places of worship -- including both sites selected by the gaming board. That doesn't sit well with gaming board Chairman Tad Decker. He says the agency will likely ask the state Supreme Court to take the case. That could prevent the Philadelphia city clerk from authorizing the question for the ballot.

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) - Pennsylvania's gambling regulators want challengers to the slot-machine licenses they awarded to put up money to cover potential revenue losses to the state.
The petitions filed in state Supreme Court are based on an assumption that the court challenges will delay the opening of four of the state's freestanding slots casinos by six months. The Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board says that would cost the state 280 (M) million dollars in revenue. Gaming board Chairman Tad Decker calls it "money that you never get back."
The Supreme Court has scheduled the cases for oral arguments on May 15th. The appeals were filed earlier this month. Decker says that if the challengers win, they would keep the
money.

LOGANVILLE, Pa. (AP) - The son and daughter-in-law of an 87-year-old woman whose body was found covered with bedsores, maggots and open wounds now face murder charges.
York County Assistant District Attorney Timothy Barker says the family of Bernadette Leiben had given up "all basic health care" for her when she died almost three years ago. She had been living in Airville at the home of her son, Williams Donohue, who's now 72, and his wife, Frances Ann Donohue, who's now 60. Barker says they were motivated by money, having gotten control
of her finances through power of attorney. Barker says the Donohues weren't arrested until yesterday because investigators needed time to gather enough evidence.