WASHINGTON

U.S. BANS POULTRY FROM BRITISH COLUMBIA

America banned poultry from mainland British Columbia yesterday because of a case of bird flu, though Canadian officials said it wasn’t the virulent form in Southeast Asia blamed for more than 60 human deaths.

The governments of Taiwan and Japan indicated they would take similar action.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency said Sunday that a duck at a commercial poultry farm in British Columbia had tested positive for bird flu. The virus was a low-pathogenic North American form that doesn’t kill poultry and is not a threat to people, officials said.

“We’re waiting to get more information from Canada, at which point we could be able to scale back” the ban, an Agriculture Department spokesman Jim Rogers, said. “We just need that information.”

Canadian officials plan to report to America within 24 hours, according to Canada’s chief veterinary officer, Dr. Brian Evans.

Depending on the results, America could restrict imports from a smaller, regional area, Mr. Rogers said.

The farm with the infected duck, in Chilliwack outside of Vancouver, isn’t licensed to export. Authorities have begun killing about 56,000 birds on the farm with carbon dioxide gas and have quarantined four other farms within three miles of the area. An outbreak of bird flu in 2004 in British Columbia prompted the killing of 17 million birds.

Dr. Evans said Canada would have preferred that America take no action since the virus found in the duck is different from the one in Asia.

“That would have been consistent with how we’ve treated low-path findings in the United States previously,” he said. “But again, we’re working in an extremely sensitive international environment at this point.”

– Associated Press

GROUPS QUESTION VEHICLE ROOF CRUSH PROPOSAL

Safety groups said yesterday a proposed regulation to require stronger vehicle roofs was inadequate for protecting motorists in rollover crashes, which kill more than 10,000 people a year.

On the other side, automakers said the government underestimated the design changes that would be needed to upgrade their fleets and urged regulators to give them more time.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration proposed the regulation in August requiring roofs to handle direct pressure of 2.5 times the vehicle weight, an increase from the current rule of 1.5 times the weight.

For the first time, it takes into account large sport utility vehicles and pickups such as the Ford Expedition and Dodge Ram while seeking ways to protect occupants in the future through improved seat belt technology.

– Associated Press

WEST

SHOOTING SUSPECT SENT MESSAGES BEFORE RAMPAGE TACOMA, Wash. – A man accused in a shooting spree at a crowded shopping mall sent a text message to his ex-girlfriend minutes before the rampage, saying: “Today is the day the world will know my anger,” the woman said yesterday.

Tiffany Robison, Dominick Sergio Maldonado’s former girlfriend, told ABC’s “Good Morning America” that he sent the message shortly before noon Sunday.

Maldonado, 20, opened fire with an assault rifle at the Tacoma Mall and took three people hostage in a music store, authorities said. Six people were hurt, one critically.

Bret Strickler, who said he was Maldonado’s best friend, told the Seattle Times he received a similar text message while Maldonado was allegedly holding the hostages. “The world will feel my anger,” Mr. Strickler said the message read. Maldonado was jailed on $450,000 bail on assault and kidnapping charges.

– Associated Press

NIKE JET MAKES EMERGENCY LANDING

PORTLAND, Ore. – A Nike corporate jet carrying its chief executive, William Perez, and six other people developed landing gear problems shortly after takeoff yesterday but then made a safe emergency landing after the gear was unstuck.

The Gulfstream jet touched down at 12:11 p.m. at Hillsboro airport, the same airport where it had taken off bound for Toronto around five hours earlier.

– Associated Press

9TH CIRCUIT BACKS SCHOOL IN DISPUTE OVER MUSLIM ROLE-PLAYING

SAN FRANCISCO – A federal appeals court has rejected a lawsuit brought by parents of two Christian seventh-graders who accused a Contra Costa County, Calif., school of unconstitutionally indoctrinating them with Islam.

A unanimous three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said the Byron Unified School District was educating the students about Islam in role-playing sessions in which students recited Muslim names and prayers in a 2001 history class.

The students had accused the district of endorsing religion, but in a brief ruling issued Thursday, the court said the activities “were not overt religious exercises that raise establishment clause concerns.”

The students were also encouraged to go without candy or television for a day to understand what it is like to fast during Ramadan. Children were also given an opportunity to critique the Muslim culture as part of a final exam.

The students’ parents said they planned to ask the judges to reconsider, or for a hearing before a larger panel.

– Associated Press