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Nation in brief

N.Y. mayor begins 2nd term today

By wire services
Published January 1, 2006

NEW YORK - It's been four years since billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a newcomer to politics, took charge of a city devastated by the World Trade Center attack and a nose-diving economy.

With his second inauguration today, a more seasoned politician begins the New Year facing issues common to many big-city mayors: housing, schools and redevelopment.

"I've learned a lot over the last four years," Bloomberg said this past week. "I've put in place some of the building blocks that we can take this city forward on."

Along with a troubled economy and a grieving city, Bloomberg inherited an underperforming school system - the nation's largest, with 1.1-million pupils. He wrested control of the system away from state officials, and has seen upticks in student test scores, but schools remain a top concern for his second term.

Looking back, his feelings are "quite hard to describe," Bloomberg said.

"If I've learned anything over the last four years, it's that I love New York and appreciate what New York is all about, even more than when I started," he said.

LEESBURG, N.J. - By every account, the New Year's Day 2005 fight between inmates and guards at Bayside State Prison was terrifying, with broomsticks and clothing irons used as weapons and blood splattering the floor and walls.

But inmates and guards tell vastly different stories about the scope of the fight and what happened after it ended. Guards say they were attacked by inmates in a prison riot. Inmates allege the guards abused them after the fight was over.

Guards and prisoners agree that the fight began when 25-year-old convicted drug dealer Omar McCray, who was indicted for his alleged role in the fight, was stopped at the entrance to a unit where inmates live in open pods rather than locked cells. Guards took away contraband chicken he was carrying and, within minutes, guards and inmates were fighting.

Guards said McCray called for help from members of the Bloods gang, yelling "Bloods out, rat-a-tat, Bloods out." Guards radioed a distress signal and 54 officers poured in from other parts of the prison.

In legal filings, letters to Department of Corrections officials and interviews and correspondence with the Associated Press, 24 inmates allege that guards dragged prisoners from their bunks, punched them, stomped on their backs, spit at them and used racial slurs after the initial skirmish was over.

The guards' unions say no prisoners were abused during or after the fight.

ATLANTA - An Iraqi infant with severe birth defects arrived in Atlanta Saturday for medical treatment that was offered after U.S. soldiers discovered the child during a raid on a home.

Baby Noor al-Zahra or, to the Americans, "Baby Nora," left Baghdad Friday in a military transport plane, accompanied by her grandmother and father.

"This is certainly an exciting day for everyone," said Greg Wright, a spokesman for U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., who helped arrange for the child's medical treatment in Atlanta.

U.S. troops discovered the baby three weeks ago during a raid of a house in Abu Ghraib, a poverty-stricken district west of Baghdad. The soldiers noticed paralysis in the baby's legs and what appeared to be a tumor on her back.

They later learned the 3-month-old child had spina bifida, a birth defect in which the backbone and spinal cord do not close before birth.

Dr. Roger Hudgins, a pediatric neurosurgeon who agreed to take the case, said it's not yet clear how much physicians will be able to do to help the child.

Baby Noor's health care is to be provided for free, he said.

[Last modified January 1, 2006, 00:29:14]