Nation in brief

Terry Nichols guilty of killing 161 in Okla.

McALESTER, Okla. - Nearly a decade after the Oklahoma City bombing, Terry Nichols was found guilty of 161 state murder charges Wednesday for helping carry out what was then the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil. He could get the death sentence he escaped when he was convicted in federal court in the 1990s.

The verdicts came after only five hours of deliberations. Nichols was stone-faced and stared straight ahead at the judge as the verdicts were read, while his attorneys bowed their heads and clenched their hands together.

Prosecutors beamed, and family members hugged and congratulated them.

"I'm just so thrilled for these families," said a tearful Diane Leonard, whose husband died in the bombing. "After nine years, the families who lost loved ones finally have justice."

Oklahoma prosecutors brought the case with the goal of finally winning a death sentence against Nichols, who is serving a life term on federal charges in the 1995 bombing. The same 12-member jury will now determine Nichols' fate on the state charges: life in prison or death by injection. The penalty phase, to begin Tuesday, is expected to last four to six weeks.

David Dellinger, a lifelong and pre-eminent peace activist who was one of the "Chicago Seven" defendants after the riots at the 1968 Democratic Party convention, has died. He was 88.

Mr. Dellinger died Tuesday (May 25, 2004) at a nursing home in Montpelier, Vt. According to friends, he had suffered from Alzheimer's disease.

"Dave was a true hero," said John Froines, a co-defendant in the Chicago Seven case. "He was a man who devoted his life to positive change, and he never once hesitated or stepped back."

Mr. Dellinger lost track of the number of times he was arrested or jailed over the years for various protests, including demonstrations against the Vietnam War.

Through the decades, he was a stalwart in nonviolent protest beside the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Daniel Berrigan, Daniel Ellsberg and other leaders on the left. But he probably is best known for being one of those on trial in Chicago after the 1968 Democratic Convention.

Mr. Dellinger was in his mid 50s at the time - the "old man" of the group of radicals who faced prison after the antiwar protests they had planned during the convention turned into riots when Chicago police attacked demonstrators.

WASHINGTON - Problems that voters encountered in Florida and elsewhere in 2000 are likely to recur this fall unless Congress, states and voters fix them quickly, a coalition of voters' rights groups warned Wednesday.

The main problems are:

Confusing voter registration and identification requirements.

Errors in purging lists of eligible voters.

Misused and malfunctioning voting machines, including the infamous punch-card machines.

Inaccurate counting of ballots cast by voters who may be voting in the wrong precincts.

These problems disenfranchised between 4-million and 6-million voters in the 2000 presidential election, according to a Caltech-MIT study released in 2001.

The League of Women Voters and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, an alliance of civil rights organizations and labor groups, are joining forces with other voter advocacy groups to push for solutions to as many voting problems as possible before November's election.

Significantly absent from their list of voting ills are problems created by electronic voting machines, a widely debated concern.

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