TOWOAC, Colo. – Two fast-spreading wildfires threatened ancient cliff dwellings in southwestern Colorado and forced the shutdown Tuesday of some guided tours on tribal land.
One fire on the Ute Mountain Ute Indian reservation doubled in size to 300 acres, authorities said. The other, a 2,300-acre blaze, burned about five miles away near Mesa Verde National Park, also on Ute Mountain Ute land.
The smaller fire was 40 percent contained by Tuesday night; the larger blaze, sparked by lightning last week, was 75 percent contained.
The threatened cliff dwellings date from the Puebloan period, from 600 A.D. to 1300 A.D., and the area holds petroglyphs, stone tools, pottery and other artifacts.
Fire crews attacked from the air to avoid damaging fragile artifacts with bulldozers, and archaeologists were brought in to help preserve artifacts.
In Arizona, fire officials reported progress fighting a 22,500-acre blaze east of Tucson. The fire had burned to within a half-mile of about 30 homes and cabins in Madera Canyon.
D.C.: Abortion pill infection risk
The government warned doctors Tuesday to be on the lookout for rare but deadly infections in women using the abortion pill RU-486, citing two more deaths after its use. At least five U.S. women have died after taking the pill since it began selling in 2000. But the four deaths caused by bloodstream infections, or sepsis, all occurred in women who didn’t follow Food and Drug Administration-approved instructions for a pill-triggered abortion, said agency drug chief Dr. Steven Galson.
Proposal increase veterans money
A Senate subcommittee injected $1.98 billion into a spending bill to cover a Veterans Affairs Department shortfall projected in the 2006 budget. The $82.8 billion spending bill, which also pays for military construction projects, provides $23.3 billion next year for veterans medical services, which the committee said is $1.34 billion more than President Bush requested. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., urged an investigation into why the VA came up short and how to prevent it from happening again.
Virginia: Padilla seeks freedom
A lawyer for Jose Padilla, an American accused of plotting to detonate a radioactive “dirty bomb,” went before a federal appeals court in Richmond on Tuesday and demanded that the U.S. government either charge his client with a crime or set him free. Padilla, a former Chicago gang member and Muslim convert suspected of being an al-Qaida operative, was seized in 2002 after flying from Pakistan to Chicago on what authorities said was a scouting mission for a plot to set off a conventional bomb laced with radioactive material.
Georgia: Charges in boy’s death
Six counselors at a state-run wilderness camp for troubled boys were charged with murder in the April 21 death of Travis Parker, a 13-year-old boy with asthma who was restrained for more than an hour and denied his inhaler. The boy had angrily confronted one of the counselors for withholding food from him as punishment. A White County grand jury handed up the charges of felony murder, child cruelty and involuntary manslaughter Monday.
Wisconsin: Tire fire shuts roads
Fire erupted in a huge pile of tires at a recycling plant outside Watertown Tuesday, sending black smoke billowing for miles across southeastern Wisconsin and shutting down roads as firefighters tried to contain the blaze. About 6 acres of Watertown Tire Recycling Co.’s estimated 1 million tires were in flames Tuesday night.
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