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Lava surfaces on Mount St. Helens

For the first time since Mount St. Helens awakened three weeks ago with earthquake rumblings and several bursts of ash and steam, new lava has pushed through to the surface, geologists reported Tuesday.

Scientists flying around the crater on Monday spotted a light gray fin-shaped slab of rock, about 200 feet long and 60 feet high, that was not there the day before. Infrared measurements put the temperature of the new rock at 900 to 1,100 degrees.

"Our consensus is there is new magma that has now breached the surface," said Dr. Jon J. Major, a geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey.

Small earthquakes started shaking on Sept. 23 around Mount St. Helens, which had not erupted since 1986. The first of several emissions of steam and ash shot out of the volcano's crater Oct. 1.

WASHINGTON - Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said Tuesday that the role of overseeing computer security and the Internet should have a higher profile at the agency, in the face of increasing concern from technology executives and experts that cyber-security is getting inadequate attention.

Ridge told an industry council that advises the White House that the agency was creating a new position of assistant secretary to be responsible for both cyber- and telecommunications security, according to two executives who heard the remarks.

But hours later, Homeland Security spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said that despite Ridge's comments, final details on the title and responsibilities of the elevated position had not been decided. An administration source who spoke on condition of anonymity later said Ridge misspoke; the job will instead be deputy assistant secretary.

The controversy over how best to handle cyber-security reached a boiling point on Oct. 1, when Amit Yoran, head of Homeland Security's National Cyber Security Division, quit in frustration over his inability to get the department to be more aggressive on the issue.

WASHINGTON - Sen. Mark Dayton, D-Minn., said Tuesday he was closing his Capitol Hill office because of security concerns in what appeared to be an atypical response to intelligence information that has been shared with senators about terror threats.

Senate leadership aides said they knew of no other senators who planned to follow Dayton's example, and Sergeant-at-Arms William Pickle scheduled a meeting Wednesday for senators' chiefs of staff to assure staffers that there are no new threats, according to the aides.

Dayton closed his office in the Russell building across the street from the Capitol and moved his staff to Minnesota and to office space off Capitol Hill. He said his Senate office would remain closed while Congress is in recess until after the Nov. 2 elections.

"I do so out of extreme, but necessary, precaution to protect the lives and safety of my Senate staff and my Minnesota constituents, who might otherwise visit my office in the next few weeks," Dayton said in a statement announcing the closure.

Dayton said he could not disclose the contents of what he described as a "top secret intelligence report" presented to senators by Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., but said he based his decision on a "careful review of all available documents" and decided to act on his own after Frist declined to convene a meeting of all senators to discuss the subject.

BATON ROUGE, La. - A jury took just 80 minutes to find a serial killings suspect guilty of first-degree murder Tuesday in the death of a 22-year-old Baton Rouge woman.

Jurors will begin hearing testimony Wednesday to determine whether Derrick Todd Lee, already sentenced to life in prison for another killing, should be executed for the slaying of Charlotte Murray Pace in May 2002.

Authorities arrested Lee in May 2003 following a 10-month investigation that included taking DNA samples from more than 2,500 men in southern Louisiana. Using DNA evidence, police eventually linked Lee, a former truck driver, to the murders of seven women from 1998 to 2003, including Tampa native Carrie Yoder. For Lee to be executed, the jury will have to vote unanimously for the death penalty.

Lee was convicted in August in the death of 21-year-old graduate student Geralyn DeSoto. He was sentenced to life in prison in that case.