SOUTH

TRAPPED MINERS SCRIBBLED NOTES TO LOVED ONES

TALLMANSVILLE, W.VA – Some of the 12 coal miners who died in the Sago Mine disaster scrawled farewell notes assuring their loved ones that their final hours trapped underground amid toxic gases were not spent in agony.

“Tell all I’ll see them on the other side,” read the note found with the body of 51-year-old mine foreman Martin Toler Jr. “It wasn’t bad. I just went to sleep. I love you Jr.”

Tom Toler, Martin’s older brother who worked 30 years in the mine with him, said yesterday that the note was “written very lightly and very loosely” in block letters on the back of an insurance application form his brother had in his pocket.

– Associated Press

WASHINGTON

RICE ACCUSES RUSSIA OF USING GAS SUPPLY AS A POLITICAL WEAPON

Secretary of State Rice accused Russia of using its energy wealth as a political weapon and warned yesterday that Moscow must play by international rules if it wants to be part of the global economy.

Ms. Rice said it was “ironic and not good” that Russia used gas exports to apply pressure to former close ally Ukraine just as Moscow was assuming the rotating presidency of the Group of Eight economic powerhouse nations.

“It was not a good week from the point of view of Russia’s demonstrating that it is now prepared to act … as an energy supplier in a responsible way,” Ms. Rice told reporters.

– Associated Press

TOP CONSERVATIVES HONOR AVE MARIA LAW SCHOOL’S FIFTH ANNIVERSARY

Some of America’s top conservative legal minds gathered near the White House last night to commemorate the fifth anniversary of Ave Maria Law School.The Ann Arbor, Michigan-based school was established in September 2000 by Domino’s Pizza founder Thomas Monaghan on the inspiration of Pope John Paul II’s encyclical letter “Fides et Ratio,” or Faith and Reason, as an explicitly Catholic institution. It recently earned accreditation from the American Bar Association.

A celebration of the milestone at the Hay Adams Hotel was attended by two former solicitors general, Theodore Olsen and Kenneth Starr; an author and a former Supreme Court nominee, Robert Bork; the president of Americans for Tax Reform, Grover Norquist, and a federal Court of Appeals judge for the Washington, D.C. Circuit, Janice Rogers Brown, a trustee of the State University of New York, Candace de Russy, among others.

– Staff Reporter of the Sun