WORLD
ABUJA, Nigeria – A Nigerian airliner reportedly carrying 104 people, including the country’s Muslim spiritual leader, crashed Sunday shortly after taking off during a storm from the airport in Abuja. At least six people survived, a TV station said.
The Boeing 727 was carrying 104 passengers and crew members, state radio reported, citing Rowland Iyayi, head of the National Air Space Management Agency.
The radio said the flight was en route to the northwest city of Sokoto and no survivors had been found. But private Channels Television reported later that at least six people survived.
Among the passengers was the sultan of Sokoto, Muhammadu Maccido, who is the spiritual leader of Nigeria’s Muslims, according to Mustapha Shehu, spokesman for the Sokoto state government.
About half of Nigeria’s 130 million people are Muslims. The West African nation is the most populous in Africa and the continent’s leading oil exporter.
Security forces kept reporters away from the crash site. At the airport in Abuja, security officials are keeping away a crush of people seeking information about friends or family aboard the plane.
President Olusegun Obasanjo ordered an immediate investigation into the cause of the crash, his spokeswoman Remi Oyo said in a statement.
NATION
WASHINGTON – House Majority Leader John Boehner says he might have taken matters into his own hands if he or any GOP leader had known about ex-Rep. Mark Foley’s sexually explicit instant messages to former pages.
“Foley’s conduct was reprehensible, abhorrent. And if any one of us would have known about this, we would have dragged him out of there by his tie,” said Boehner, the current No. 2 leader in the House.
Boehner, R-Ohio, maintains he told Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., last spring about Foley’s too-friendly e-mails to pages and was informed the matter was being handled.
There has been no indication that Republican leaders knew of the sexually explicit instant messages to former male pages until the scandal became public and Foley, R-Fla., resigned at the end of the September.
Boehner, interviewed Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” said the Foley matter was one of hundreds he dealt with daily in the House, and he was hopeful an internal probe will be resolved soon.
STATE & LOCAL
RICHMOND – Gov. Tim Kaine on Thursday ordered smoking banned from the majority of state offices and state-owned vehicles on Jan. 1, a move he hoped would set a health-conscious example in a state known for its tobacco industry.
The order affects state employees in offices occupied by the executive branch, as well as public colleges and universities. It includes more than half the state’s 100,000 employees.
Until now, those offices created their own policies.
Virginia joins 22 states and Washington, D.C., with similar bans. Kaine made the announcement in downtown Richmond, a few miles from the headquarters of cigarette giant Philip Morris USA.
Kaine cited health care costs in making the decision. Virginia spent $550 million on health care for state employees last year.
There are exceptions to the new rule. Offices occupied by the legislative and judicial branches are not included in the measure, as the governor doesn’t manage those offices.
Virginia’s mental health facilities, the Department of Corrections and Virginia State Police have requested to set their own smoking policies.
Rules for smoking outside offices, but on state-owned property, will fall to agency managers. Secretary of Administration Viola Baskerville will form guidelines, Kaine said.