CENSUS

FASTEST-GROWING COMMUNITIES ARE IN THE WEST

More than 100 years ago, Horace Greeley told his fellow Americans to “Go west.” And they still are. Twelve of the nation’s 20 fastest growing metropolitan areas are in the West, the Census Bureau says. The fastest growing: Greeley, Colo. Greeley and its surrounding communities, about 60 miles north of Denver, grew by 16.8%, to 211,000 people, between 2000 and 2003, according to a report being released today. The annual Census estimates of urban population growth show the New York-northern New Jersey-Long Island area with a population of 18.6 million. The number of people in the region, the nation’s largest metropolitan area, was up 1.7% from three years earlier.

– Associated Press

SOUTH

FAT IN TEEN YEARS LINKED TO CARDIOVASCULAR DISEASE

DALLAS – Excess body fat in teens, even those who are not overweight, seems to be linked to less elastic blood vessels, a condition that can mean future cardiovascular disease, researchers say in a study published this week in the American Heart Association journal Circulation. If one’s blood vessels are elastic, it’s easier for them to pump more blood. The heart has to work harder to pump blood through stiff blood vessels, leaving a person more likely to develop high blood pressure.

– Associated Press

TEENAGER KILLS PARENTS, GRANDMOTHER

ELKHORN CITY, Ky. – A 17-year-old who was sent home from school for being intoxicated shot his parents and grandmother to death, then died in a crash after police attempted to pull him over on a highway. Another driver also was killed. The teen was identified yesterday as Matthew Hackney of Elkhorn Creek, Ky.

– Associated Press

WASHINGTON

‘OPERATION OFFSET’ ENUMERATES POSSIBLE BUDGET CUTS

As Congress approved $6.1 billion in tax relief to promote rebuilding the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina, congressmen in the House’s Republican Study Committee unveiled yesterday their compensatory counter-proposal: slashing $500 billion in pork-barrel spending.The report, entitled “Operation Offset” and released yesterday at a press conference at the Capitol, enumerates scores of possible cuts to the federal budget. The reductions would allow Washington to provide aid to areas devastated by Katrina without saddling future generations with more debt – and without raising taxes. Among the committee’s proposals are delaying Medicaid prescription-drug benefits for a year; eliminating federal subsidies to Amtrak; eliminating the National Endowment for the Humanities, and cutting American contributions to U.N. peacekeeping operations.

– Staff Reporter of the Sun

DEA CRACKS DOWN ON SITES SELLING MEDICATIONS ILLEGALLY

Drug enforcement agents said they arrested at least 18 people and halted prescription writing by dozens of doctors and a pharmacist in a crackdown yesterday on illegal sales of medications over the Internet. Thirteen arrests were made in Texas and five in Florida. The Drug Enforcement Administration suspended the registrations of 20 doctors and 22 Internet pharmacies in America, including Puerto Rico, to stop them from writing or filling prescriptions. Agents also shut down at least 4,600 Web sites the suspects controlled, and seized 2,400 checks and money orders written by individuals for $200 each.

– Associated Press

COURT DENIES COMPENSATION FOR HELIPORT CLOSURE

A divided panel of a federal appeals court ruled yesterday that the government need not compensate the operator of a heliport that was effectively shut down by airspace restrictions imposed after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The unusual case pitted national security concerns against the Constitution’s prohibition on uncompensated takings of property. Judge Alvin Schall of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said the federal government’s ban on helicopter traffic did not amount to a confiscation of the landing site from its operator, Air Pegasus. In dissent, Judge Pauline Newman complained that the result “negates the basic rights and protections secured by the Fifth Amendment, and places the financial burden of emergency government action for national security, on the property owner.”

– Staff Reporter of the Sun

EAST

NO CHARGES BROUGHT AGAINST CHURCH SEX ABUSERS

PHILADELPHIA – Leaders of the Philadelphia Archdiocese including two cardinals concealed sexual abuse by Roman Catholic priests for four decades, a grand jury has found, but no criminal charges can be brought against the church or its clergy because of the limits of state law. The grand jury, convened more than three years ago, issued a scathing report yesterday that documents assaults by more than 60 priests.

– Associated Press

WEST

AIRLINER WITH FAULTY LANDING GEAR LANDS SAFELY

LOS ANGELES – A JetBlue airliner with faulty landing gear touched down safely yesterday at Los Angeles International Airport after circling the region for three hours. JetBlue flight 292 left Bob Hope Airport in Burbank at 3:17 p.m. for New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport, a JetBlue spokesman, Bryan Baldwin, said.

– Associated Press