Nation in brief

Reservations needed when Statue of Liberty reopens

WASHINGTON - Visitors to the Statue of Liberty, closed to the public after the Sept. 11 attacks because of security concerns, will not be allowed up the cramped circular metal staircase into the crown when the 151-foot symbol in New York Harbor reopens on Aug. 3.

For the first time, visitors will need reservations for tours at specific times, in an effort to eliminate the hours-long lines that marked most trips to see the 118-year-old statue. Visitors without a reservation can take tours around the island and go the gift shop.

The public will be able to view the statue's interior through a glass ceiling at roughly the level of Lady Liberty's feet, the government said Wednesday.

Liberty Island reopened three months after the 2001 attacks, but the statue has remained off limits while officials tried to create a more secure system for the public.

PITTSBURGH - Democrat John Kerry said he opposes state laws that give driver's licenses to illegal immigrants, a position that puts him at odds with the Hispanic activists he is courting in the presidential race.

Immigrant advocates have been pushing for the laws, saying they help undocumented workers get around safely. Licensed drivers know the rules of the road and can buy insurance, making streets safer for everyone, they say.

"I think that driver's licenses are part of the legality of being here and if you've been here a period of time we may work something out as part of that immigration process, but I wouldn't give somebody who is automatically one year in here illegally all the rights and privileges of being here legally," Kerry told the Spanish-language network Telemundo.

NEW YORK - Joel Steinberg got out of prison and returned to a hostile city Wednesday after nearly 17 years behind bars for beating to death his 6-year-old adopted daughter in one of the most haunting child-abuse cases in New York history.

The former lawyer, 63, was released from a prison in Pine City, in central New York, after serving two-thirds of the maximum 25-year sentence for manslaughter. He has continued to deny responsibility for the girl's death.

Lisa Steinberg died in November 1987, three days after a vicious beating in the Greenwich Village apartment where she lived with Steinberg and his former lover, Hedda Nussbaum. The girl was found naked, bruised and not breathing.

HUNTSVILLE, Texas - A man whose false testimony sent an innocent man to death row before the 1988 documentary The Thin Blue Line cast doubt on the evidence was executed Wednesday for an unrelated murder.

David Ray Harris, 43, was sentenced to death for a 1985 shootout that killed Mark Mays after Harris tried to abduct the victim's girlfriend.

Harris gained notoriety for implicating Randall Dale Adams, a hitchhiker he had picked up in a stolen car, in the 1976 death of Dallas police officer Robert Wood.

Adams, who had no previous criminal record, served 12 years in prison and came within three days of execution in 1979 before his sentence was commuted to life in prison.

Adams was released from prison in 1989, a year after the release of Errol Morris' 1988 documentary The Thin Blue Line, which suggested he had been wrongly convicted.

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