WASHINGTON – Demonstrators would be barred from disrupting military funerals at national cemeteries under legislation approved by Congress and sent to the White House yesterday.
The measure, passed by voice vote in the House hours after the Senate passed an amended version, specifically targets a Kansas church group that has staged protests at military funerals around the country, claiming that the deaths were a sign of God's anger at U.S. tolerance of homosexuals.
The “Respect for America's Fallen Heroes Act” would bar protests within 300 feet of the entrance of a cemetery and within 150 feet of a road into the cemetery from 60 minutes before to 60 minutes after a funeral. Those violating the act would face up to a $100,000 fine and up to a year in prison.
Associated Press
New Orleans levee repairs nearly done
NEW ORLEANS – The Army Corps of Engineers has all but completed its repairs to New Orleans' ruined levee system.
With just days to go before the beginning of the hurricane season, the Corps' $800 million effort has even improved the system in many ways, engineering experts say, with tougher concrete flood walls, brawny new canal gates and more than 150 miles of new or repaired levees.
Though the Corps has largely achieved its goal, independent engineers say it is the goal that is the problem. New Orleans is still very much at risk, they say, because the level of protection the Corps has reached is still not as strong as the city needs.
New York Times News Service
Texas speed limit cranked to 80 mph
AUSTIN, Texas – Not only is everything bigger in Texas, it's about to become faster, too.
By the end of the month, if all goes according to plan, the speed limit on more than 500 miles of west Texas interstates will rise to 80 miles per hour. That will make Texas home to the highest posted limit anywhere in the United States.
The Texas Legislature fast-tracked the increased speed limit last year and unanimously recommended it, then the Texas Department of Transportation followed suit with feasibility studies that gave the green light.
Now all that remains is pro-forma approval by the Texas Transportation Commission, which is expected at a meeting today in Austin.
Chicago Tribune
Dropout convicted in N.Y. subway plot
NEW YORK – A high school dropout who drew the attention of undercover police with his anti-American rants after Sept. 11 was convicted yesterday of plotting to blow up one of Manhattan's busiest subway stations in retaliation for the Abu Ghraib prison scandal.
A federal jury in Brooklyn convicted Shahawar Matin Siraj, 23, of conspiracy and other charges. He faces up to life in prison.
The defense had sought to portray him as an impressionable simpleton who was lured into a phony plot by a paid informant eager to earn his keep. Prosecutors disputed that claim, arguing that even if it was not the defendant's idea to bomb a subway station, no law-abiding citizen would have gone along with it.
Siraj and James Elshafay were arrested on the eve of the 2004 Republican National Convention carrying crude diagrams of their target. Elshafay immediately agreed to cooperate with the government.
Associated Press
