Drug agents discover tunnel in border town

Drug agents discovertunnel in border town
TUCSON, Ariz. -- Federal agents have discovered a second tunnel that was apparently used to smuggle drugs across the Mexican border.
The 30-foot tunnel discovered Wednesday leads from a sewer system to a car wash in Nogales, Ariz., about a half-mile from the border. Another tunnel had been found Monday leading from a sewer to a home in the same town.
Agents found the second tunnel while serving warrants in a drug investigation unrelated to the discovery of the first tunnel, said Jim Molesa, a Drug Enforcement Administration spokesman.
The tunnel took the form of a 16-inch-wide pipe through which drugs were pushed, authorities said. Agents searching the pipe found about 350 pounds of marijuana, with a street value of about $300,000.
Man involved in disputeover twins charged
RANCHO CUCAMONGA, Calif. -- A California man locked in an international adoption battle over twin girls has been accused of molesting two of his family's teen-age baby sitters.
Richard Vincent Allen, 49, was taken into custody at his home Wednesday after a weeklong investigation by the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department. He was booked for investigation of lewd and lascivious acts on a child, but wasn't charged with any crimes.
Allen and his wife, Vickie, adopted twin baby girls through an Internet adoption service last year but said the children were taken from them after two months and given to a couple from Great Britain who paid more money. The girls are now in the custody of British authorities.
"This case is totally separate and had nothing to do with the adoption or anything like that," sheriff's spokesman Chip Patterson said Wednesday. "It was investigated without prejudice based on information given to us by the victims."
The 13-year-old girl told authorities she was molested at Allen's home last November. Patterson said her 14-year-old sister told authorities Allen committed similar acts to her several times during 1999.
Scientists end contactwith asteroid lander
WASHINGTON -- After a mission that exceeded expectations, the hardy spacecraft that became the first manmade object to land on an asteroid was losing its long-distance connection to scientists on Earth.
On Feb. 12, the 1,100-pound NEAR spacecraft gently landed on the asteroid Eros and continued to send signals to Earth to the surprised and delighted scientists at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory who were in charge of the mission.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration extended communications with the NEAR mission by two weeks beyond its scheduled Feb. 14 conclusion to allow the spacecraft to take close-up readings of the asteroid's surface.
That reprieve ended Wednesday night when, in effect, NASA's Deep Space Network hung up on the spacecraft.
Eros is about 196 million miles from Earth and the spacecraft signal is too faint for conventional antennae.
Statues destroyed
KABUL, Afghanistan -- Using everything from tanks to rocket launchers, Taliban troops fanned out across the country today to destroy all statues, including two 5th-century statues of Buddha carved into a mountainside.
Despite international outrage, troops and other officials began demolishing images, which they say are contrary to Islam, in the capital of Kabul as well as in Jalalabad, Herat, Kandahar, Ghazni and Bamiyan, said Qadradullah Jamal, the Taliban's information minister.
"The destruction work will be done by any means available to them," he said. "All the statues all over the country will be destroyed."
Afghanistan's ancient Buddhas -- 175 feet and 120 feet tall -- are located in Bamiyan, about 90 miles west of Kabul. The larger Buddha is said to be the world's tallest statue in which Buddha is standing up rather than sitting.
The main museum in Kabul also contains Buddhist statues and artwork, which Jamal said will be demolished.