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Nation in brief

White House seeks to avoid showdown on Padilla

By wire services
Published December 10, 2005

WASHINGTON - Lawyers for the Bush administration on Friday told members of a federal appeals court the Supreme Court shouldn't review the government's decision to imprison a U.S. citizen as an enemy combatant in the war on terrorism for more than three years without charging him with a crime.

In a change of course, the administration said the appellate court ruling that had allowed the government to jail Jose Padilla indefinitely was moot because he's now been charged.

The Justice Department has said Padilla is a terrorist who wanted to explode a radioactive bomb in the U.S. Last month, however, the Justice Department charged Padilla with lesser crimes, prompting judges on the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., to seek an explanation for the shift.

The administration's action on Friday is intended to avert a Supreme Court showdown over its policy that the government can hold suspected terrorists indefinitely, without charges, by designating them enemy combatants.

BOWLING GREEN, Ky. - Rory and Cory McDowell were inseparable as brothers, riding motorcycles, fixing cars and hunting together. They were buried next to each other Friday, two days after dying in separate traffic crashes within minutes and just a few miles apart.

At the funeral, a collage of pictures near the two caskets showed the brothers growing up together. Hundreds of mourners tried to console each other and wondered how such tragedy could befall a family. The sons of Andy and Rose Marie McDowell had no other siblings.

Rory was 23, Cory 21. Their vehicles crashed early Wednesday - about 15 minutes and three miles apart. The crashes occurred near the home they shared with their father, a Warren County deputy sheriff.

ADRIAN, Mich. - A convicted murderer and another inmate escaped from prison Friday by hiding in the back of a garbage truck, but they were quickly arrested, a state corrections spokesman said.

Lyle Harvey Curtis, 37, and William Dean Michels, 47, left the Gus Harrison Correctional Facility in a garbage truck but were captured less than an hour later, said Russ Marlan, the prisons spokesman.

JERSEY CITY, N.J. - Gov.-elect Jon Corzine announced Friday that he would appoint Democratic Rep. Robert Menendez to serve the remaining year of his Senate term, giving New Jersey its first minority senator.

After Corzine is sworn in as governor on Jan. 17, he will officially make Menendez the third Hispanic in the Senate, joining Ken Salazar of Colorado and Mel Martinez of Florida.

[Last modified December 10, 2005, 00:52:07]