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'Not scared' to be at reopened store

By Times Wires
Published December 21, 2007

OMAHA, Nebraska 

About 50 employees held hands and lined across a department store's entrance Thursday before parting to let a crowd of holiday shoppers enter for the first time since a gunman killed eight people there 15 days earlier.

Eight wreaths were placed near the entrance to memorialize the eight victims, and a blue ribbon crossing each wreath carried the message: "We remember."

Customers applauded as the gates opened, and employees greeted them at the entrance. Many shoppers immediately took escalators to the third floor, where most of the victims were shot.

By midday the store was crowded - more so than similar stores nearby.

"We always think about the victims and their families," said Pamela Perry, 39. "But I'm not scared to go in the store."

BLACKSBURG, Va.

Virginia Tech room to be peace study center

The Virginia Tech classroom wing where a student gunman killed 30 people and himself and wounded two dozen others last spring will be turned into a place to study peace, the school announced Thursday.

Having vowed never again to use Norris Hall for general classes, school officials said the rooms will house the new Center for Peace Studies and Violence Prevention. "It was an opportunity for something new and different and hopeful to emerge," said provost Mark McNamee, who headed a campus task force that reviewed proposals for the use of Norris Hall.

Besides the peace center, the second-floor classrooms where Seung-Hui Cho killed 30 of his 32 victims will host an interactive learning space.

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico

Bin Laden's driveris denied POW status

A U.S. military judge has denied prisoner-of-war status to a Guantanamo detainee, putting the former driver for Osama bin Laden in line to be one of the first to face a war crimes tribunal at the base.

The judge, Navy Capt. Keith Allred, rejected defense arguments that Salim Ahmed Hamdan was a POW and thus beyond the jurisdiction of the Guantanamo tribunals under international law. Allred said there is credible evidence the Yemeni prisoner was bin Laden's personal driver from 1997-2001, occasionally served as a bodyguard for the al-Qaida leader, and sometimes picked up and delivered weapons.

Hours later, the military filed charges against another Guantanamo detainee, an alleged al-Qaida conspirator whose brother-in-law reportedly was among the hijackers who slammed American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001.

The back-to-back moves underscored the Defense Department's determination to speed up trials for suspected terrorists being held at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo.

CLEVELAND

Election board can't decide on vote system

The board that oversees elections in Ohio's most populous county deadlocked Thursday on whether to switch to a new voting system for the March presidential primary, leaving the state's chief elections officer to break the 2-2 tie.

Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner recommended last week switching from the $21-million touch-screen machines that Cuyahoga County currently uses to a new optical-scan system. She is expected to vote in favor of switching after the Board of Elections officially notifies her of the deadlock, which it must do within the next two weeks. "I'm sure we will act on it as quickly as we can" said Brunner's spokesman, Patrick Gallaway.

If the county switches to an optical-scan system, it would be the third voting system it has used in three years. The vote fell along party lines, with the two Republican board members voting against the measure and the two Democratic members backing it.

WICHITA, Kan.

Doctor, nurse chargedin 4 overdose deaths

A physician accused of operating a "pill mill" was charged Thursday with illegally prescribing drugs in a scheme that prosecutors say caused the overdose deaths of at least four patients.

A Topeka grand jury returned a 34-count indictment against Dr. Stephen Schneider and his wife, nurse Linda Schneider, who were arrested Wednesday, U.S. Attorney Eric Melgren said. They are to appear in federal court in Wichita on counts including conspiracy, unlawful distribution of a controlled substance, health care fraud, illegal monetary transactions and money laundering.

According to the indictment, 56 of the doctor's patients died from accidental prescription drug overdoses in the past five years. However, the indictment said only four of the deaths were found to be directly caused by drugs prescribed by Schneider's clinic in Haysville, south of Wichita.

[Last modified December 21, 2007, 00:49:40]