U.S. REJECTS ARIZONA PLAN TO PRIVATIZE FOOD STAMPS
PHOENIX (AP) -- The federal government has rejected Arizona's proposal to let a private company run its food stamp program, a decision that could bode ill for other states seeking to privatize state-run benefits.Wednesday's denial marked the first time the Department of Agriculture, which oversees the food stamp program, has made a ruling about state requests for privatization, a USDA spokesman said.
Wisconsin and Florida have also expressed interest in privatizing food stamp programs, and their requests are being reviewed, he said.
The state had awarded MAXIMUS, a national company that runs benefits programs in other states, the job of moving about 20 percent of the welfare caseload off food stamps and cash benefits and into jobs over the next two years.
But in a letter to state Department of Economic Security Director Linda Blessing, federal officials said Arizona's proposal didn't ensure needy families would have "fair and equitable" access to the benefits.
2 CALIFORNIA TEENS CHARGED WITH KILLING GERMAN TOURIST
SANTA MONICA, Calif. (AP) -- Two 18-year-olds were charged with killing a German tourist during a robbery attempt outside a luxury hotel.
Neither suspect is believed to have pulled the trigger, according to authorities who refused to elaborate on their roles in the crime.
Horst Fietze, 50, was killed Oct. 12 when he, his wife and another couple were confronted by three men and a woman near the Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel.
The killing of Fietze was the first of seven in a six-week span that shattered the feeling of security in this normally peaceful coastal city, where only one person was killed in all of 1997.
MONGOLIAN FOSSILS INDICATE EMERGENCE OF MARSUPIALS
NEW YORK (AP) -- Scientists have uncovered a pair of fossils in Mongolia that show some of the earliest characteristics of marsupials, mammals that develop their young in a pouch.
The specimens of Deltatheridium, an opossum-like animal, are 80 million years old, which would mean they lived among the dinosaurs.
The discovery more closely defines the time period when marsupials emerged, said Guillermo Rougier, a paleontologist at the University of Louisville and the American Museum of Natural History in New York.
Rougier was among three researchers who found the specimens at Ukhaa Tolgod in the deserts of Mongolia. Their research was to be published in the journal Nature.
CHICAGO POLICE CHARGE MAN WITH ARSON IN PULLMAN FIRE
CHICAGO (AP) -- Authorities have charged a man with arson after a fire destroyed the last remaining structure of the Pullman Works, the railroad factory where a key battle in the American labor movement was fought 100 years ago.
The factory once was famous for its elegant railroad cars, and the company was also at the heart of a dispute that increased the status of black workers. The neighborhood itself was once a city created and owned by the company.
"It all started there," said Leslie Orear, president of the Illinois Labor History Society. "You can't talk about history of the labor movement, the civil rights movement, or even the Democratic Party without talking about Pullman."
An extra-alarm fire Tuesday night tore through the 220,000- square-foot administration building that was the heart of George M. Pullman's empire beginning in the 1880s. The fire toppled its landmark clock tower and collapsed the roof.
Police charged a man with arson Wednesday. Anthony Buzinskns had been in custody since Tuesday night, when authorities found him at the scene of the fire, said police spokesman Pat Camden.
He would not elaborate on what led to the charges.