ISTANBUL, Turkey
Leftist militants claim Turkish police killed comrades
Associated Press
Leftist militants accused police yesterday of killing four of their comrades during a raid on an Istanbul home to end a hunger strike staged to protest Turkey's treatment of prisoners.
Police said the two men and two women died from burns or carbon monoxide poisoning after setting themselves on fire when police raided the house. The militants had threatened self-immolation if security forces intervened.
Police said they only intended to take the strikers to the hospital, but witnesses said police fired into the house. The Turkish news agency, Anatolia, said at least three people were shot.
Forty-one people have died during the hunger strike, which began more than a year ago with leftist militants in prison and has grown to include supporters on the outside.
Many of the fasting prisoners are convicted members of the outlawed Revolutionary People's Liberation Army-Front, or similar armed Marxist organizations that have claimed responsibility for scores of attacks and assassinations over the past decade.
The strike was called to protest the transfer of prisoners from large, dormitory-style prison wards to smaller cells. Prisoners say the new prisons leave them isolated and vulnerable to beatings from guards.
But the government says the large cells, holding up to 100 inmates, allowed the groups to use prisons as training camps for militants. The government has ruled out a return to the old system.
KENSINGTON, Minn.
Two people admit they faked alleged Viking inscription on Minnesota rock
Associated Press
Two people say they are the ones who carved inscriptions on a 2,200-pound rock - not a band of Vikings who supposedly explored the state in 1363.
When the rock was found six months ago near Kensington, it revived a 103-year-old controversy about claims that Norsemen traveled in Minnesota.
Discoverers touted the stone as "new evidence" of the authenticity of the original Kensington Runestone, uncovered in 1898 by a Sweden-born farmer who said he found it wrapped in the roots of a tree. Many investigators think the farmer carved the inscriptions in Norse runes on that rock himself.
Now Kari Ellen Gade and Jana Schulman have come forward admitting the new rock was their work.
"One of the reasons we came forward was we saw that people were being asked to make financial contributions to have the rock tested," Gade said. "We didn't feel it would be right to carry this further."
In 1985, Gade and Schulman, along with three other University of Minnesota graduate students in a seminar on runic inscriptions, carved the rock ''for fun'' and to cast doubt on the validity of the original Kensington Runestone, they said.
They said they thought believers in the Kensington Runestone were naive.
OMAHA, Neb.
Man sentenced to death for killing two children sits in silence.
Associated Press
A man was sentenced to die in the electric chair yesterday for raping and strangling a 13-year-old girl and drowning her 7-year-old brother after arguing with their mother.
Arthur Lee Gales Jr. was convicted in August on two counts of first-degree murder in the Nov. 12 deaths of Latara and Tramar Chandler. He was also convicted of attempted first-degree murder for beating the mother, Judy Chandler, whom he had once dated.
Gales, 36, maintained his innocence, but DNA evidence helped prosecutors convict him at trial.
He sat in silence without handcuffs as District Judge Gerald Moran handed down two death sentences for the murders and an additional sentence of up to 50 years in prison for the attempted murder. "Now my children can rest. Justice has been served," Chandler, 36, said afterward.
She had urged that Gales be sentenced to death, but the slain children's father, Tracey Newman, disagreed.
"It's just more pain to other families and my family," Newman said. "I wanted him to live out his life like I have to live it out. Let him know what he did every day."
Prosecutors argued Gales should get the death penalty because of the cruelty of the crimes and because the children were killed to cover up their mother's beating.
Prosecutors also pointed to Gales' criminal history, which includes convictions for sexual assault and armed robbery.
Defense lawyers argued that Gales should be spared for the sake of his relatives.
Chandler said she and Gales had an argument over another man the night of the killings. She was beaten and left for dead on railroad tracks.
Chandler's daughter was found raped and strangled in a bedroom in Chandler's apartment. Her son was found drowned in the bathtub.
