SOUTHWEST

TENTH ANNIVERSARY OF OKLAHOMA CITY BOMBING OBSERVED

Children who lost their parents in the Oklahoma City bombing recited the names of the dead, and mourners gently laid bouquets on empty chairs symbolizing each victim yesterday as they observed the 10th anniversary of the nation’s worst act of domestic terrorism.

In a church that served as a temporary morgue after the blast, more than 1,600 people remembered those who died with 168 seconds of silence starting at 9:02 a.m., the moment that the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building collapsed into a heap of desks, concrete, and bodies on April 19, 1995.

They also honored the survivors, the rescuers, and the endurance of a damaged city that President Clinton said “made us all Americans again.”

“Oklahoma City changed us all. It broke our hearts and lifted our spirits and brought us together,” said Mr. Clinton, who was in office on the sunny morning that Timothy McVeigh brought his bomb and hatred for the government to the city in a Ryder truck.

Across the street at the Oklahoma City National Memorial, in the grassy field where the building once stood, 168 empty chairs were a solemn reminder of the carnage of a decade earlier. Teddy bears were placed on miniature chairs representing the 19 children slain in the building’s daycare center.

– Associated Press

WEST

AIR FORCE CADETS COMPLAIN OF RELIGIOUS HARASSMENT BY EVANGELISTS

AIR FORCE ACADEMY, Colo. – Less than two years after it was plunged into a rape scandal, the Air Force Academy is scrambling to address complaints that evangelical Christians wield so much influence at the school that anti-Semitism and other forms of religious harassment have become pervasive.

There have been 55 complaints of religious discrimination at the academy in the past four years, including cases in which a Jewish cadet was told the Holocaust was revenge for the death of Jesus and another was called a Christ killer by a fellow cadet. The 4,300-student school recently started requiring staff members and cadets to take a 50-minute religious-tolerance class.

“There are things that have happened that have been inappropriate. And they have been addressed and resolved,” said Colonel Michael Whittington, the academy’s chief chaplain. More than 90% of the cadets identify themselves as Christian. A cadet survey in 2003 found that half had heard religious slurs and jokes, and that many non-Christians believed Christians get special treatment.

Critics of the academy say the sometimes public endorsement of Christianity by high-ranking staff has contributed to a climate of fear and violates the constitutional separation of church and state at a taxpayer-supported school whose mission is to produce Air Force leaders.

– Associated Press

JACKSON DEFENSE CHALLENGES PHOTOS OF ACCUSER’S MOTHER

Michael Jackson’s attorney yesterday challenged the authenticity of photographs that appeared to show the mother of the pop star’s accuser with severe bruises from an alleged beating by store security guards.

The woman’s family received a settlement of more than $150,000 following the 1998 store incident. The episode is unrelated to the child-molestation case against Mr. Jackson, but the singer’s lawyers have seized on it to argue that the family has a history of making false claims for money. Defense attorney Thomas Mesereau Jr. attacked the photos, introduced by the prosecution late Monday, by asking the woman when the pictures were taken. She said immediately – her then-husband wanted to document her injuries. “But didn’t you testify that you didn’t have these bruises immediately?” asked Mr. Mesereau.

She fumbled for words and said she had been doing everything at the instruction of a defense attorney after she was arrested on suspicion of assault and battery, burglary, and petty theft – charges that were eventually dropped.

Mr. Mesereau asked whether she told a woman at a law office that the bruises that were photographed were actually from a beating by her former husband.

“That’s incorrect,” she said during her fifth and final day on the stand.

– Associated Press