Nation briefly

WASHINGTON – President Bush will relaunch his push for a sweeping overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws today in Arizona, with a fresh speech on the border, a new congressional leadership that is friendlier to his views but facing the same dynamics that scuttled his last attempt: a cooperative Senate but bipartisan opposition in the House.

In his speech in Yuma, Bush will stress four elements that he has to see in an immigration bill: more border security; better enforcement of immigration laws in the interior, especially laws against the hiring of undocumented workers; a temporary worker program to address labor shortages; and “resolving without amnesty and without animosity the status of the millions of illegal immigrants that are here right now,” said White House spokesman Scott Stanzel.

As spelled out in a recently leaked White House presentation, which White House aides describe as ideas for debate, undocumented workers could apply for three-year work visas, renewable indefinitely at a cost of $3,500 each time. To get a green card that would make them legal permanent residents, they would have to return to their home countries, apply for re-entry at a U.S. embassy or consulate and pay a $10,000 fine.

More green cards would be made available to skilled workers by limiting visas for parents, children and siblings of U.S. citizens. Temporary workers would not be able to bring their families into the country.

A $100 million fund is being set up by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation to pay for five years of research into global warming by nonprofit groups, research institutions and universities. The aim of the foundation’s Climate Change Initiative is to look at policies that can speed the use of new technologies, and broaden use of existing ones, to reduce industrial gases that scientists blame for heating the atmosphere.

A Hillside teenager arrested last year alongside her mother in a prostitution case has been accused of running an escort service out of her suburban Chicago home using the popular Web site Craigslist. Kimberly Petersen, 17, was arrested after detectives doing a routine search of the site’s classified boards found one that included an offer to “enjoy a beautiful blonde” for $250 an hour. An undercover detective arrived at Peterson’s home was quoted a $300 rate for a 27-year-old woman to perform a sex act, Hillside police said.

California: Gas jumps 18 cents

The average cost of self-serve regular gasoline rose about 18 cents per gallon nationwide over the past two weeks, according to the latest Lundberg Survey of 7,000 gas stations across the country, released Sunday in Camarillo. That translated to an average price of $2.78 a gallon.

Tai chi, already known as a good low-impact exercise for older people, may help prevent shingles, a recent study suggests. Shingles is a painful skin rash that can appear in people who have had chickenpox. Los Angeles researchers found older people who performed tai chi had a better immune response against the virus that causes shingles. The National Institute on Aging helped fund the research.

A fire gutted the Jacksonville Humane Society headquarters, killing dozens of animals including nearly all of the cats in the building, authorities said. Up to 200 animals were in the facility, but it could take days to account for all the animals and tally the dead. The cause of the blaze remains under investigation.

From Herald news services