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Nation in brief

Fire crews quell blaze threatening Utah town

By wire services
Published July 24, 2005

SALT LAKE CITY - Fire crews on Saturday contained a 17,000-acre fire that had threatened a town in southwestern Utah while authorities lifted evacuation orders in a nearby community that had been nearly surrounded by a separate blaze.

Bulldozers plowed a line around the flames threatening Veyo, and firefighters were inching toward containment of the fire, U.S. Forest Service fire information officer David Chevalier said.

The blaze was touched off last week by lightning.

Elsewhere, authorities lifted evacuation orders in nearby Gunlock, where about 84 of the 130 residents left their homes Friday night.

In Colorado, a fast-moving grass fire was stopped late Friday near Golden after roaring to within 50 feet of several homes. On Saturday, firefighters monitored remaining hot spots while temperatures soared toward 100 degrees.

Authorities said fireworks likely started the fire, which grew to 175 acres before it was contained.

The National Interagency Fire Center said 42 large fires were active Saturday, mostly in Western states.

ANNAPOLIS, Md. - Retired Navy Vice Adm. James Stockdale, one of the country's most decorated Vietnam war veterans and a onetime vice presidential candidate, was buried Saturday at the Naval Academy.

About 500 people, including several Medal of Honor recipients and fellow former prisoners of war, attended the funeral for Adm. Stockdale, who died July 5 at his home in Coronado, Calif. Adm. Stockdale, who suffered from Alzheimer's disease, was 81.

The 12 honorary pallbearers included Arizona Sen. John McCain, also a Naval Academy graduate and POW during the Vietnam War, and Texas billionaire Ross Perot, the third-party presidential candidate who chose Adm. Stockdale as his running mate during his run for the White House in 1992.

Adm. Stockdale endured more than 7 years as a POW at North Vietnam's infamous "Hanoi Hilton" prison and spent four of those years in solitary confinement.

He received the Medal of Honor in 1976.

CHARLESTON, S.C. - A former school bus driver has been sentenced to five years in prison for accepting a $10 bribe to ignore two students as they sexually assaulted a 14-year-old girl, authorities said.

Lacey Jane Bolen, 26, of Goose Creek pleaded guilty to being an accessory after the fact to second-degree criminal sexual conduct with a minor.

The bus was equipped with a 911 panic button to alert authorities to problems, but Bolen never triggered the device during the assault in January.

A student reported the incident to a school official the next day. The sex act had been caught on a school bus videotape and resulted in the arrests of Bolen and two 16-year-old students.

The two teens are awaiting trial on charges of second-degree criminal sexual conduct with a minor. They are charged as adults.

[Last modified July 24, 2005, 00:32:04]