ALABAMA
Voters reject prohibition measure
ATHENS — Voters in Athens decided yesterday to continue to allow the sale of alcohol in the city’s stores and restaurants, according to unofficial results.
City Clerk John Hamilton said 6,318, or 53 percent, of the city’s registered voters turned out for the citywide elections. Of those voters, 4,288, or 68 percent, voted against the measure to end the sale of alcohol in Athens and 2,030, or 32 percent, voted for the measure.
Public-policy experts said such prohibition votes aren’t unheard of, but they are rare.
The wet-to-dry vote took place less than four years after the northern Alabama city of 22,000 narrowly decided to legalize the sale of beer, wine and liquor in stores and restaurants.
CALIFORNIA
State to raise tax on ‘alcopops’
SACRAMENTO — California regulators voted yesterday to raise taxes on “alcopops,” flavored alcoholic beverages that some say are packaged to appeal to youths and contribute to underage drinking.
Maine has already made such a move, and other states are likely to follow, said Michael Scippa, advocacy director for the Marin Institute, a watchdog group.
The state Board of Equalization voted 3-2 to tax brands such as Mike’s Hard Lemonade and Zima as distilled spirits rather than as beer, which has a lower tax rate.
The classification change will increase the tax from 20 cents per gallon to $3.30 per gallon starting in July 2008, if the board can get the regulations in place by then.
FLORIDA
Spacecraft turned into classroom
CAPE CANAVERAL — Teacher-astronaut Barbara Morgan transformed the space shuttle and space station into a classroom yesterday for her first educational session from orbit, fulfilling the legacy of Christa McAuliffe with joy and also some sadness.
“I’ve thought about Christa and the Challenger crew just about every day since 20-plus years ago,” Mrs. Morgan said in a series of broadcast interviews. “I hope that they know that they are here with us in our hearts.”
Mrs. Morgan, 55, who was Mrs. McAuliffe’s backup for the doomed 1986 flight, got her first opportunity to talk with schoolchildren late yesterday afternoon, almost halfway through her two-week mission.
The youngsters were assembled at the Discovery Center of Idaho in Boise, less than 100 miles from the elementary school where Mrs. Morgan taught before becoming an astronaut. Mrs. Morgan’s two sons, now teenagers, attended inventors’ camp there years ago.
ILLINOIS
Mother sets fire, killing self, children
NAPERVILLE — A mother bought a can of gasoline, shut herself in her bedroom with her two young children and set a blaze that killed all three, police said yesterday.
Investigators say 32-year-old Nimisha Tiwari — who police said was in a “troubled marriage” — set herself on fire, and rescuers found all three ablaze on a bed in the master bedroom, police Chief David Dial said. Also killed were Tiwari’s 4-year-old son, Vakadham, and 18-month-old daughter, Anaya.
Rescuers were called to the home in this suburb west of Chicago after a passer-by spotted smoked coming from the second story. Firefighters had to force their way in because the front door was bolted shut, Chief Dial said.
LOUISIANA
Pelosi reassures Katrina survivors
NEW ORLEANS — Hurricane Katrina’s floodwaters washed Valeria Schexnayder’s home away nearly two years ago and now a government-issued trailer sits on her lot while she seeks aid, she told a group of congressional Democrats yesterday.
“This was not my fault. I’m 60 years old. I can’t go through much more stress,” she told reporters after telling her story to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. She got a hug from Mrs. Pelosi and an assurance, made by the speaker many times during the tour: “We’re listening.”
It was the second day of a two-day tour by a delegation of 13 House Democrats undertaken as the second anniversary of the Aug. 29, 2005, storm approached. On Monday, the group toured parts of the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
Yesterday morning, the group visited classrooms on the first day of school in New Orleans and heard about myriad problems still facing the battered education system nearly two years after Katrina struck.
MINNESOTA
Slabs of bridge cleared from river
MINNEAPOLIS — Heavy rain made the Mississippi River’s currents too treacherous for divers to resume searching for victims of the city’s bridge collapse, so contractors used the break yesterday to pull up huge concrete slabs, clearing the way for divers to reach what’s underneath.
Politicians, meanwhile, wrangled over how to replace a 1,900-foot highway span that once carried 140,000 cars a day.
The state Department of Transportation released a preliminary design yesterday for the new bridge, but it showed little more than an aerial view of a 10-lane span, two lanes wider than the old bridge. It will be up to a contractor, to be chosen from an initial field of five, to flesh out the design.
The state’s goal is to open the new bridge by the end of 2008.
NEW JERSEY
Newark to boost surveillance network
NEWARK — Scores of surveillance cameras and gunshot detectors will be installed in high-crime areas in an effort to combat spiraling gun violence in Newark, the mayor announced yesterday, 10 days after three college students were killed in a schoolyard.
Mayor Cory A. Booker said he thinks the $3.2 million program will produce the most extensive such network in any American city. It will be financed by taxpayer funds and private donations.
Nearly three dozen cameras already were in use at the time of the killings the night of Aug. 4, but the total is expected to reach more than 120 when all are in place by next summer.
OHIO
Judge to jurors: Don’t watch ‘CSI’
HAMILTON — Most jurors are told not to read news about their case. Jurors in Butler County can’t even look forward to their weekly installment of TV’s “CSI.”
Common Pleas Judge Patricia Oney tells sitting jurors in this southwestern Ohio city they can’t watch shows ranging from the three “CSI” crime-scene investigation shows to the several “Law & Order” series.
Such shows can create unrealistic expectations for jurors, such as about what can and cannot be done with evidence, said Judge Oney.
“So many shows now are pulled in part from cases all over the country,” Judge Oney said. “I don’t want jurors watching them while they are in deliberation.”
From wire dispatches and staff reports
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