Nation in brief

Lesbian pastor stays put

YAKIMA, Wash. - A lesbian Methodist minister who was acquitted in a church trial over her sexual orientation has chosen not to return to her church, a United Methodist official said Friday.

The Rev. Karen Dammann chose to remain on family leave rather than return to First United Methodist Church in Ellensburg, said the Rev. Ron Hines, superintendent of the Pacific Northwest Conference's Seven Rivers District

Dammann, 47, declared her sexual preference in February 2001, when she sought a new church appointment. After receiving Dammann's letter, Northwest Conference Bishop Elias Galvan, under church orders, filed a complaint against her.

In March, a jury of 13 pastors meeting in Bothell acquitted Dammann of violating Methodist law, even though she acknowledged she had a female partner. Church law prohibits the ordination of self-avowed, practicing homosexuals.

WASHINGTON - The Sept. 11, 2001, attacks are a classic example of how government overclassification of documents is preventing Americans from learning information and warnings they need to protect themselves, privacy advocates say.

Thomas Kean, chairman of the 9/11 commission, says most of the secret documents he has reviewed involved materials that involved hearsay or cited information publicly available elsewhere, and so weren't true secrets.

"Three-quarters of what I read that was classified shouldn't have been," the Republican former New Jersey governor said.

The panel holds hearings in New York next week to reconstruct a timeline of exactly what happened on Sept. 11 and to get recommendations for what the country needs to do in the future from Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge.

WASHINGTON - A federal appeals court has demanded that Justice Department prosecutors explain their "arguably inconsistent" statements about their involvement in the interrogation of captured al Qaida terrorists who might provide valuable information to lawyers defending Zacarias Moussaoui, according to a court order made public Friday.

In the bluntly worded order, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in Richmond, Va., said that disclosures made earlier this week by the department suggested that it might now be possible for Moussaoui's lawyers to submit written questions directly to the detainees.

The issue is an important one in the prosecution of Moussaoui, the only person charged in a U.S. court with conspiring in the Sept. 11 attacks, because the Bush administration is refusing to make the captured terrorists available to testify on Moussaoui's behalf. Court records show that the prisoners have provided information in interrogations that suggests that Moussaoui had nothing to do with the Sept. 11 attacks.

ATLANTA - Members of the armed forces who have been vaccinated against smallpox are developing an unexpectedly high rate of reactions that affect their hearts, military doctors said.

The reactions suggest that thousands of citizens would experience problems if the vaccine were ever offered broadly to the U.S. population, the doctors said.

About 16 members of the armed forces have developed cardiac problems out of every 100,000 vaccinated, Dr. Dimitri Cassimatis of Walter Reed Army Medical Center said at a briefing in New York.

About 615,000 have been inoculated since December 2002, when bioterrorism fears prompted the resumption of vaccination for military personnel and some civilians after a 30-year hiatus.

The reactions are not life-threatening, Cassimatis said. They take the form of a transient inflammation of the heart muscle and surrounding membrane that subsides after four to six weeks of rest.

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