Nation roundup for June 28

Wildfire victims crowding shelters

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) — Fire crews fought to save the U.S. Air Force Academy and residents begged for information on the fate of their homes Wednesday after a night of terror sent thousands of people fleeing a raging Colorado Springs wildfire.

More than 30,000 have been displaced by the fire, including thousands who frantically packed up belongings Tuesday night after it barreled into neighborhoods in the foothills west and north of Colorado’s second-largest city. With flames looming overhead, they clogged roads shrouded in smoke and flying embers, their fear punctuated by explosions of bright orange flame that signaled yet another house had been claimed.

“The sky was red, the wind was blowing really fast and there were embers falling from the sky,” said Simone Covey, a 26-year-old mother of three who fled an apartment near Garden of the Gods park and was staying at a shelter. “I didn’t really have time to think about it. I was just trying to keep my kids calm.”

Wilma Juachon sat under a tree at an evacuation center, wearing a mask to block the smoke. A tourist from California, she was evacuated from a fire near Rocky Mountain National Park last week and, now, from her Colorado Springs hotel.

“I said I hope it never happens again, and guess what?” Juachon said.

Constantly shifting winds challenged firefighters trying to contain the 28-square-Mile Waldo Canyon blaze and extinguish hot spots inside the city’s western suburbs.

“It won’t stay in the same place,” said incident commander Rich Harvey.

Some 3,000 more people were evacuated to the west of the fire, Teller County authorities said Wednesday.

Pacts on student loans and roads

WASHINGTON (AP) — Facing weekend deadlines for action, congressional leaders have agreed to deals overhauling the nation’s transportation programs without a Republican provision forcing approval of the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline, and avoiding a doubling of interest rates for new student loans, congressional officials said Wednesday.

The agreements underscored the pressures both parties face to avoid angering voters and facing embarrassing headlines in the run-up to this November’s presidential and congressional elections. Letting road-building programs grind to a halt during an economic downturn would be a blow to the image of lawmakers, while Democrats and Republicans alike seemed eager to avoid enraging millions of students and their parents by boosting the costs of college loans.

In contrast, enactment of the transportation measure would create or save 3 million jobs, said Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., chief sponsor of the Senate version of the bill. And the student loan measure would spare an estimated 7.4 million students who get subsidized Stafford loans beginning July 1 — this Sunday — from facing $1,000 in higher interest costs over the lives of their loans, which typically take over a decade to repay.

Congressional leaders were planning to combine the highway and student loan measures into a single bill to reduce potential procedural obstacles and hoped for final approval this week.

Saudi guilty in Texas bomb plot

AMARILLO, Texas (AP) — In the months before his arrest, authorities said, Khalid Ali-M Aldawsari collected bomb-making supplies and instructional videos and made a list of targets, from nuclear power plants to the home of a former president. His goal, they said, was to carry out jihad.

Despite his attorney’s protestations that he was a harmless “failure,” Aldawsari was convicted Wednesday of attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction. He faces up to life in prison and is scheduled to be sentenced Oct. 9.

Aldawsari, a 22-year-old former Texas Tech University student, closed his eyes as the verdict was read. It took the jury fewer than two hours to convict him.

Aldawsari was arrested in February 2011 after federal agents secretly searched his West Texas apartment and found bomb-making chemicals, wiring, a hazmat suit and clocks. He also researched possible targets: nuclear power plants, the homes of three former soldiers that were stationed at Abu Ghraib prison and the Dallas home of former President George W. Bush.

Videos found in his apartment showed how to prepare TNP, a chemical explosive. FBI bomb experts have said the amounts in this case would have yielded almost 15 pounds of explosive — about the same amount used per bomb in the 2005 London subway attacks. He also tried to order phenol, a chemical that can be used to make explosives.

Pot found in face chewer’s system

MIAMI (AP) — Lab tests detected only marijuana in the system of a Florida man shot while chewing on another man’s face, the medical examiner said Wednesday, ruling out other street drugs including the components typically found in the stimulants known as “bath salts.”

There has been much speculation about what drugs, if any, would lead to the bizarre behavior that authorities said Rudy Eugene exhibited before and during the gruesome attack that left the other man horribly disfigured. A Miami police union official had suggested that Eugene, who was shot and killed by an officer, was probably under the influence of bath salts.

The Miami-Dade County Medical Examiner said in a news release that the toxicology detected marijuana, but it didn’t find any other street drugs, alcohol or prescription drugs.

Eugene also tested negative for adulterants commonly mixed with street drugs.

The department ruled out the most common components found in so-called bath salts, which mimic the effects of cocaine or methamphetamine and have been associated with bizarre crimes in recent months. An outside forensic toxicology lab, which took a second look at the results, also confirmed the absence of bath salts, synthetic marijuana and LSD.

Messages left with the medical examiner’s office for comment were not immediately returned.

The Drug Enforcement Administration last year temporarily outlawed the possession and sale of three synthetic stimulants sometimes packaged as “bath salts.” Several states have also moved to ban the drugs, often sold on the Internet and in head shops and other retail outlets. The bans don’t affect the kinds of bath salts added to tubs for their fragrance and cosmetic benefits.

An expert on toxicology testing said that marijuana alone wasn’t likely to cause behavior as strange as Eugene’s.

“The problem today is that there is an almost an infinite number of chemical substances out there that can trigger unusual behavior,” said Dr. Bruce Goldberger, Professor and Director of Toxicology at the University of Florida.

Goldberger said that the medical examiner’s office in Miami is known for doing thorough work and that he’s confident they and the independent lab covered as much ground as possible. But it’s nearly impossible for toxicology testing to keep pace with new formulations of synthetic drugs.

“There are many of these synthetic drugs that we currently don’t have the methodology to test on, and that is not the fault of the toxicology lab. The challenge today for the toxicology lab is to stay on top of these new chemicals and develop methodologies for them, but it’s very difficult and very expensive.” Goldberger said. “There is no one test or combination of tests that can detect every possible substance out there.”

An addiction expert said she wouldn’t rule out marijuana causing the agitation.

“It could have been the strain of marijuana that increases the dopamine in the brain, such as sativa,” said Dr. Patricia Junquera, assistant professor at the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine.

There are two strains of marijuana called sativa and indica. The sativa increases dopamine and gives you energy while decreasing pain threshold. Indica is a “sleepy high,” she explained.

“People don’t really know what the amount of either is in each little packet of marijuana,” she explained. “And we can’t differentiate between the two in the blood, much less in a dead person.”

She also suggested that if Eugene had a mental disorder, “the marijuana could have increased even further the dopamine levels and aggravated the situation. So that can’t be ruled out.”

It’s not clear what led to the May 26 attack on Ronald Poppo, a 65-year-old homeless man who remains hospitalized. Eugene’s friends and family have said he was religious, not violent and that he didn’t drink or do drugs harder than marijuana.

“There’s no answer for it, not really,” Eugene’s younger brother, Marckenson Charles, said in an interview. “Anybody who knew him knows this wasn’t the person we knew him to be. Whatever triggered him, there is no answer for this.”

Surveillance video from a nearby building shows Eugene stripping Poppo and pummeling him, before appearing to hunch over and lie on top of him. The police officer who shot Eugene to death said he growled at the officer when he told him to stop.

Charles, Eugene’s brother, said the family does not plan to pursue any legal action against the police for shooting Eugene.

“They used the force they felt was necessary, even if we don’t agree with that,’ he said.

He said that Eugene has been buried.

Shortly before the attack, a person driving on the MacArthur Causeway told a 911 dispatcher a “completely naked man” was on top of one of the light poles on the causeway and “acting like Tarzan.” Still, police have said little about what may prompted Eugene to attack Poppo.

Poppo has undergone several surgeries and remains hospitalized. His left eye was removed, but doctors said earlier this month they were trying to find a way to restore vision in his right eye. He will need more surgeries before he can explore the options for reconstructing his face, doctors have said. A message left with the hospital was not immediately returned.

Poppo’s family has said it had no contact with him for more than 30 years and thought he was dead.

Eugene’s girlfriend, meanwhile, has said he never showed any signs of violence. Yovonka Bryant said she and Eugene often read the Bible and the Quran together, and often watched a religious television program in the mornings. She said she never saw Eugene drink and only saw him smoke marijuana once at a party.

Stowaways suspected in container ship docked in NJ

NEWARK, N.J. (AP) — Dock workers rushed to unload stacked containers from a cargo ship that arrived in New Jersey from the Middle East on Wednesday after a Coast Guard inspection team heard knocking for about two hours that suggested stowaways might be inside one of the boxes.

More than a dozen ambulances and law enforcement officials met the 850-foot Ville D’Aquarius when it docked early Wednesday at Port Newark, one of the nation’s busiest ports. Large mechanical cranes began unloading containers from the ship.

By midday Wednesday, all but one ambulance had quietly left the pier. By evening, officials had inspected 150 of the 200 containers authorities believe could be carrying people. The ship has 2,000 containers altogether.

The Coast Guard team had boarded the ship outside New York Harbor early Wednesday as the ship prepared to dock, spokesman Charles Rowe said. The officers were knocking on a bulkhead, or partition, of the ship as a routine security check and heard knocks back, he said, but they couldn’t pinpoint the source of the sound. The return knocks ended after about two hours, Rowe said.

The team followed protocol and didn’t open containers at sea in order to control the situation, he said.

Drew Barry, of the Sandy Hook Pilots Association, said he boarded the vessel about 20 miles offshore to help pilot it into port.

“There are at least 30 to 40 containers on top of the hatch cover, and I don’t know how many more below it,” Barry said. “If there are people down there, with no food and water for days, they’re probably pretty desperate by now.”

Shipping containers are steel boxes, usually 8 feet wide and 8- to 10-feet high and either 20- or 40-feet long, designed to withstand the rigors of the high seas and are strong enough to be stacked several high.

They normally can be opened only from the outside. There’s hardly any ventilation.

Rowe said it was taking about eight minutes to check each container — unloading it off the ship, opening it up and X-raying it if necessary.

The Department of Homeland Security, which was also involved in the investigation, said Wednesday night that its officers and agents were prepared to continue examining containers through the night.

The container ship, which a manifest said was carrying machine parts to Norfolk, Va., was loaded in India, Rowe said.

The ship began its voyage May 30 in the United Arab Emirates, then made one stop in Pakistan and two stops in India. Its last port before Newark was in Egypt on June 15.

Speaking at an unrelated news conference, Andrew McLees, special agent in charge of Homeland Security investigations for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said the ship’s origin and itinerary prompted the initial search.

“The routing of the ship and the ports of call was what led to the actions,” McLees said.

Michael Ward, the FBI’s top official in New Jersey, said the response was appropriate given the port’s vulnerability. The area is considered a prime potential target for terrorists.

“You’re going to get a response like this any time you have these types of facts,” Ward said. “It was an appropriate response which we did out of an abundance of caution.”

Shipping companies are legally responsible for keeping stowaways off their vessels, said Frank Atcheson, a maritime lawyer based in North Bergen, N.J. When stowaways are found, the companies are liable not only for fines but also must pay to house the stowaways where they are found and for secure transportation back to where they originated.

Between January 1998 and Dec. 16, 2011, more than 13,000 stowaways were found in more than 4,000 incidents around the world, according to the International Maritime Organization.

Some of the higher-profile discoveries of recent years: 22 Chinese men, all in good health, arrived in Seattle in 2006; 32 Chinese men, also in good health, were found in Los Angeles in 2005; eight people, most of them Turkish, were found dead along with five survivors in a ship in Ireland in 2001.

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Associated Press writers Geoff Mulvihill in Haddonfield, N.J., and David Porter in Newark, N.J., contributed to this report.