USA

April 19, 2005

Survivors, family members of victims, and rescuers are expected to gather Tuesday at a memorial service in Oklahoma City on the 10th anniversary of the truck bomb that killed 168 people and wounded 600 others. Vice President Cheney will speak, 168 seconds of silence will be observed, and the name of each victim will be read. Timothy McVeigh, the lead perpetrator of the blast that destroyed the Murrah Federal Building, was executed in 2001. Accomplice Terry Nichols is serving a life sentence without parole.

The Supreme Court declined to consider the constitutionality of state-mandated buffer zones around clinics where abortions are performed. Such areas keep protesters at bay, but opponents claim that legalizing them establishes pro-abortion rhetoric zones. The justices let stand a Massachusetts law enacted after the 1994 fatal shootings of two clinic workers. The court did agree to review an unrelated cocaine possession case that focuses on whether police may search a home when one occupant consents but another doesnot.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is expected to vote Tuesday on John Bolton, President Bush's nominee to be ambassador to the UN. Although Democrats have accused Bolton, the top American diplomat for arms control, of bullying subordinates, committee chairman Richard Lugar (R) of Indiana says he expects Bolton to be confirmed.

David Onstott, a registered sex offender, is being held without bail after confessing Sunday to killing 13-year-old Sarah Lunde, who had been missing from her Ruskin, Fla., home since April 9. Onstott once dated the girl's mother and claims he choked Sarah Lunde to death after they argued when he showed up unexpectedly at her home.

Although vowing to continue a sit-in that began April 4 at Washington University's undergraduate admissions office in St. Louis, student protesters who advocated better pay for the school's lowest-paid employees ended a six-day hunger strike over the weekend. It was lifted after the chancellor agreed to meet with the protesters later this week. Meanwhile, students at Yale, Columbia, and the University of Massachusetts were expected to stage similar protests.