2 arrested in slayings of mother, daughters

2 arrested in slayingsof mother, daughters
OCEAN SPRINGS, Miss. -- Police charged two men Saturday with the bludgeoning deaths of a woman and her two daughters in their home.
Ngan Tran, 27, and Thong Le, 19, both of Biloxi, Miss., were charged with three counts of murder, said Sheriff Mike Byrd.
Autopsy results showed the woman and her daughters died of blows to the head, Byrd said.
Minh Hieu Thi Huynh, 45, Thuy Hang Huynh Nguyen, 15, and Thanh Truc Huynh Nguyen, 11, were discovered early Friday by the woman's husband as he arrived home from his casino job, police said.
The victims and the suspects are all Vietnamese.
Police believed the motive for the killings was robbery, but said they found no evidence of forced entry.
Cyanide found in letterat N.J. post office
NEWARK, N.J. -- A letter addressed to a New Jersey police department contained "trace amounts" of cyanide that spilled onto two workers at Newark's main post office, authorities said Saturday.
Tests of the powdery white substance determined it was mainly laundry detergent mixed with a small amount of cyanide, said Tony Esposito, a spokesman for the U.S. Postal Inspection Service.
"Based on the small amount of copper cyanide, it did not pose a hazard to anyone unless it had been ingested," Esposito said.
Cyanide is a poisonous chemical and exposure to lower levels may cause breathing difficulties, vomiting and headaches. Exposure to high levels can harm the brain and heart and can be fatal.
The FBI and state police are investigating. Authorities would not identify which police department the letter had been addressed to.
A postal worker spotted the letter, which bore no return address and had the stamp in the lower right hand corner instead of the upper right corner, authorities said.
Investigator: Submarinewasn't sunk by collision
MOSCOW -- The sinking of the Russian nuclear submarine Kursk was not caused by a collision with a foreign submarine, the leading investigator said Saturday.
"I don't know who is saying this, but I can tell you for sure: we do not have a single conclusion indicating this," Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov said, according to the Interfax news agency.
The Kursk's entire 118-person crew died when explosions sent the submarine, one of the Russian Navy's most advanced vessels, plunging to the Barents Sea floor during military exercises on Aug. 12, 2000. Investigators have been examining the wreckage, which was raised from the ocean Oct. 8.
Officials said the first explosion in the Kursk's bow was caused by a practice torpedo, but opinions have differed on what triggered that explosion.
Most experts now believe it was caused by a flaw in the torpedo, but some officials had continued to say a submarine collision was a possibility.
Imminent famine
BEIJING -- Warning that North Korea will run short of food by January, a U.N. official said Saturday his agency will ask foreign donors for 610,000 tons of grain to get the starving country through the winter.
The North's harvest this year was bigger than in 2000 but still 1.47 million tons short of what it needs, said David Morton, representative of the World Food Program in the North. Part of that gap has been filled with donations from Japan, South Korea, the United States and others.
"The food pipeline from donors will stop in January," Morton said at a news conference. "We will need to revive donor contributions ... so that the beneficiaries, the children, don't run out of food in the middle of the winter."
Associated Press