Deadly storm weakens, should miss Florida
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras – Tropical Storm Gamma weakened Sunday, a day after it deluged the coast of Central America and killed at least six people – three in flooding in Honduras and three in the crash of a small plane belonging to a Belize lodge owned by filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola.
Forecasters said the slow-moving Gamma, the 24th named storm of an already record-breaking Atlantic hurricane season, was likely to miss Florida. The storm’s top sustained winds weakened overnight to near 40 mph. Gamma was expected to stay well below hurricane strength of 74 mph and could be downgraded to a tropical depression within a day, the National Hurricane Center said in Miami.
Early Sunday, Gamma was drifting slowly northward toward Cuba, forecasters said.
Earlier forecasts showed Gamma following a course similar to the one taken by Hurricane Wilma, which barreled across south Florida on Oct. 24, causing 21 deaths, damaging homes and bringing widespread power outages. But it was now expected to skirt Florida.
Bush urges China on rights, trade surplus
BEIJING – Amid concern over a crackdown on dissidents, President Bush pressed China on Sunday to expand religious, political and social freedom and won renewed promises but no concrete actions from President Hu Jintao to open China’s huge markets to U.S. farmers and businesses.
Hu said the two leaders sought an outcome of “mutual benefit and win-win results.”
But their meeting Sunday at the Great Hall of the People on the edge of Tiananmen Square appeared to produce no breakthroughs on U.S. demands for currency reforms in China and no details about how China would cut its trade surplus with the United States, on track to hit $200 billion this year.
And Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice expressed dismay over a crackdown on dissidents before Bush arrived. She said the U.S. side would raise the issue “quite vociferously with the Chinese government to both get a clarification and to make clear that we believe open societies allow people to express themselves.”
Iraq ambush kills 24, including 1 Marine
BAGHDAD, Iraq – An ambush on a joint U.S.-Iraqi patrol northwest of Baghdad left 15 civilians, eight insurgents and a U.S. Marine dead from a roadside bomb and the firefight that followed, a U.S. military statement said Sunday.
The attack began with an improvised explosive device detonating next to the Marine’s vehicle in the town of Haditha, 140 miles northwest of Baghdad, on Saturday, the U.S. command said.
Fifteen Iraqi civilians were also killed by the blast, which was followed by an insurgent attack with small arms fire, the statement said.
“Iraqi army soldiers and Marines returned fire killing eight insurgents and wounding another,” the statement said.
Pa. teen attends slain parents’ funeral
LITITZ, Pa. – Kara Borden sat with her four siblings in the chapel of Lancaster Bible College for her parents’ funeral. On the Bordens’ street, white ribbons were affixed to mailboxes to honor their memory.
The relationship between 18-year-old David Ludwig and 14-year-old Borden was a closely guarded secret. There was good reason to keep things quiet: Their four-year age difference displeased their parents.
The tensions in the Borden house apparently spilled over last Sunday, when police say Ludwig fatally shot Kara’s parents, Michael and Cathryn Borden, after an argument about their relationship, then fled with the girl.
The two were found the following day after a chase and crash in Indiana. Ludwig is being held without bail on murder and kidnapping charges; Kara is in the care of relatives and church members.