<< Previous   of   Next >> Associated Press  (click to enlarge) Former New Jersey Gov. James McGreevey arrives at the Union County Courthouse in Elizabeth, N.J., on Thursday.

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Nation, World Briefs: Severe storms damage homes, firms in the South

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. -- A line of severe storms swept across the Southeast on Thursday, damaging homes and businesses in at least three states. No injuries were reported. An apparent tornado wrecked a shopping area in Mississippi and strong winds flipped a mobile home in Alabama. In south-central Tennessee, at least four homes and a few barns were damaged. Portions of Alabama remained under tornado watches until early Thursday evening. The same weather system struck Oklahoma a day earlier.

New Jersey: Custody for governor

Former Gov. James McGreevey and his estranged wife settled custody issues for their only child on Thursday as they moved closer to dissolving their marriage, their lawyers said. The deal regarding their 6-year-old daughter came on the third day of negotiations, which included closed-door testimony before the judge who is attempting to avoid a divorce trial. "She'll get a large amount of time to spend with her parents," McGreevey said of his daughter as he left the courthouse.

D.C.: Nuclear records released

North Korea handed detailed nuclear weapons records to the United States on Thursday, an important peek into the isolated regime's bombmaking past but not enough to answer criticism that the Bush administration is grasping for a disarmament deal at any cost. The technical logs from North Korea's shuttered plutonium reactor would give outside experts a yardstick to measure whether the North is telling the truth about a bomb program that the poor nation has agreed to trade away for economic and political rewards.

U.S., Russia expel diplomats

The United States and Russia have expelled five diplomats and military attaches from each other's countries in moves reminiscent of the tit-for-tat exchanges of the Cold War-era, U.S. officials said Thursday. The latest expulsions, ordered by Russia on April 28, were of two American military attaches at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. They were preceded by the expulsion of a Russian diplomat from Washington on April 22, the expulsion of a U.S. diplomat from Moscow on April 14 and the expulsion of a New York-based Russian diplomat on Nov. 6, 2007.

Montana: Wolf lawsuit advances

A federal judge in Billings has rejected a request by the government to delay a lawsuit seeking to place the gray wolf back on the endangered species list, saying he's "unwilling to risk more deaths." At least 39 of the Northern Rockies' 1,500 gray wolves have been killed since they lost federal protection in March. That action placed wolves under the authority of state wildlife agencies in Wyoming, Idaho and Montana. The states have relaxed rules for killings wolves that harass or harm livestock. The states are also planning public hunts later this year -- the first in decades.

California: School buses collide

Two school buses carrying sixth-graders to Yosemite National Park collided Thursday, injuring a dozen children and a parent, park officials said. The children from Yolo Middle School in Newman were on their way to a day hike when one bus rear-ended the other about a mile from Yosemite Valley, a park spokesman said. Those hurt were taken to area clinics and hospitals for minor to moderate back and neck injuries, he said. "The whole string of cars came to a stop faster than they anticipated and the driver wasn't able to stop fast enough," a school spokesman said.

Lebanon: Gun battles break out

Running gunbattles raged in parts of Beirut on Thursday after the leader of Hezbollah accused Lebanon's Western-backed government of declaring war on his Shiite militant group. At least four people were killed and eight wounded in the capital. The chattering of automatic weapons and thumps of exploding rocket-propelled grenades echoed across Beirut into the night. Some families fled to neighborhoods that remained quiet. The unrest virtually shut down Lebanon's international airport for a second day and barricades closed major highways.

Senegal: Rebels mutilate villagers

A group of armed men rounded up about 20 villagers in the Casamance region and sliced off their left ears with machetes before releasing them, villagers and officials said Thursday. Wednesday's attack was apparently a warning to villagers to keep them from trying to harvest cashew nuts from trees in the area, victims said. The nuts -- one of the more lucrative crops in the region -- are harvested by villagers, bandits and rebel fighters struggling to survive in the bush.

Bahamas: Big ray back in ocean

A 1,000-pound manta ray was returned to the Atlantic Ocean on Thursday after three years as a research subject and attraction at a resort. The massive black ray, known as "Zeus," was lowered from a helicopter on a hydraulically welded frame to ensure its safe entry into the water. It spans nearly 13 feet in diameter -- including a 3-foot mouth. Relocating the ray from its 2.7 million-gallon aquarium took more than two hours, according to the Atlantis resort on Paradise Island.

From Herald news services