National and State News-Tuesday, April 17th

BLACKSBURG, Va. (AP) - We're learning a little bit about some of the 32 people who were gunned down on the Virginia Tech campus by a gunman who killed himself. One victim was a student from Georgia with a four-point-oh G-P-A. Two engineering professors also were
killed, including one whose research made for better aircraft.

DENVER (AP) - It was eight years ago this Friday that Columbine became synonymous with school violence. So the deadly shootings at Virginia Tech are being keenly felt in Littleton, Colorado, where two students killed 13 people before killing themselves. The father
of one boy who died at Columbine faults society for tolerating violence.

BAGHDAD (AP) - A top Iraqi insurgent leader claims in an audiotape posted online that his al-Qaida-linked group has begun manufacturing its own rockets. The voice is said to be that of the
head of the Islamic State of Iraq. Recently, the U-S has accused Iran of funneling weapons to insurgents in Iraq.

UNDATED (AP) - Evacuated residents in the Northeast are waiting for rivers to crest today. Many fled their homes by boat. New Jersey's Raritan River is more than ten feet above flood stage in Bound Brook, which was hit hard by Hurricane Floyd in 1999.

WASHINGTON (AP) - It's April 17th, and this year, that's the deadline for filing tax returns. People who have been directly affected by the storm that hit the Northeast this week have until
April 19th. The I-R-S says it expects to process 136 (m) million returns this year.

SMETHPORT, Pa. (AP) - An engineer at the controls of a train that derailed, polluting a pristine trout stream, is ordered to stand trial in McKean County. Evidence at the preliminary hearing for 45-year-old Michael Seifert included a transcript of Seifert's testimony at a hearing
when he was fired from Norfolk Southern Railroad. The Buffalo, New York, man was ordered yesterday to stand trial on charges of causing or risking a catastrophe and reckless endangerment. During the railroad hearing, Seifert admitted the train wasn't being operated according to the company's rules. But Seifert's lawyer says the conductor who was with Seifert had the authority to use the emergency brakes. He asked why the conductor wasn't charged.


MEDIA, Pa. (AP) - A Delaware County judge declared a mistrial for a man accused of stabbing a woman a dozen times and burning her body with gasoline. Jurors deadlocked yesterday in the trial of 40-year-old Karlious McCord of Philadelphia. The prosecutor says McCord will face a retrail for the 2004 stabbing death of 28-year-old Taniqua Green of Upper Darby. The defense lawyer says prosecution witnesses had given inconsistent descriptions and there was no physical evidence. The prosecutor says Green's van was found just blocks from McCord's
home, his address was on her computer, and he had called her cell phone around the time of the crime. He says burning the body destroyed evidence.

JOHNSTOWN, Pa. (AP) - A speech by a best-selling author and critic of Islam remains scheduled tonight at a western Pennsylvania university. That's despite calls by some members of the Muslim community to cancel the event. Members of the Islamic Center of Johnstown had asked cancelation of the speech by Ayaan Hirsi Ali at the University of Pittsburgh-Johnstown. They say her views on Islam are unjustified and Muslims in the Johnstown area get along well with everyone else. Two center officials met with Jerry Samples, the school's vice president of academic and student affairs, who says he understands their concerns. But he says Islam has been discussed at other campus events. Samples says the two also wanted to discuss Islam on
campus later and he agreed.

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) - The U.S. House Judiciary Committee wants to interview a U-S attorney from Pennsylvania among others as part of an investigation into the firings of eight federal prosecutors. Committee chairman John Conyers Junior says Mary Beth Buchanan,
U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania in Pittsburgh, is one of the people he wants to interview. The request is based on an initial round of interviews and on a review of documents released by the Justice Department. It was made in a letter yesterday to Acting Assistant Attorney General Richard Hertling. A spokeswoman said Buchanan could not immediately be reached for comment.

PITTSBURGH (AP) - A Pittsburgh company has agreed to pay nearly 350-thousand dollars in back pay to 200 employees who worked as the broadcast crew for the Golf Channel. The U-S Department of Labor says N-E-P of Pittsburgh, doing business as N-E-P Broadcasting, violated federal overtime provisions between March 2004 and February 2006. Authorities say people working on the broadcast crew were not paid one-and-a-half times their regular pay for hours worked beyond 40 in a work week. The labor department says that once the law was
explained, N-E-P helped make sure that all employees due back pay got it.

PITTSBURGH (AP) - A witness has testified that she helped a police sketch artist draw a picture of a woman she saw sitting in a car with a man who was killed in a parking garage 21 years ago. Authorities say that woman was Diana Rader, and she is charged two decades later with shooting her then-husband, 47-year-old Raymond Marzoch, on February 15th, 1986.
A preliminary hearing continues today in Pittsburgh for the 62-year-old Rader. Anne Sonkin testified yesterday that she parked facing Marzoch's car and saw a man in the driver's seat and a woman in the rear passenger seat. Rader, who has since remarried, had long been a suspect but was never charged until an Allegheny County grand jury recommended charges last month.

STROUDSBURG, Pa. (AP) - A man goes on trial today on charges of being an accomplice in a drug-related shooting in Monroe County in December 2004. Prosecutors allege that 21-year-old John Brabazon of Tobyhanna worked with 23-year-old Joseph Alvarado in the murder of
20-year-old David Sigmnud Junior and the wounding of another man outside the East Stroudsburg Wal-Mart store. Alvarado was convicted in the case and is serving 23 to 46 years
in prison.

HIGHSPIRE, Pa. (AP) - The fire department of a Dauphin County borough is to return to duty today following a financial dispute with the borough council. The Highspire Fire Department went out of service after its five line officers resigned in September. The borough had withheld the department's 24-thousand dollar annual allotment since December 2004 because the company's books weren't audited. An audit was eventually done and the council has started to help the department pay its bills. Since January, the council has paid two-thousand dollars a month to the Steelton Fire Department to provide interim fire service.