Palestinians rally

Palestinians rally
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip -- Thousands of Palestinians took to the streets today for the mass funeral of 12 Palestinians who were killed during a raid by Israeli troops on a Hamas stronghold.
Gunmen marching among the crowd called for revenge, and one armed militiaman speaking from a loudspeaker warned the new Palestinian government against cooperating with a fresh peace plan or trying to disarm Palestinian militias.
Palestinian officials and Israeli opposition leaders accused Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of using Thursday's raid in Gaza to undercut the new Palestinian prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, before he has a chance to fulfill a promise to get armed groups to stop their fight against Israel.
The Israeli raid came just a day after international mediators presented the so-called "road map" to peace.
A Sharon adviser said Israel would not halt its anti-terror campaign and would not give Abbas, sworn in Wednesday, a grace period to crack down on militants.
Climber amputates arm
MOAB, Utah -- A Colorado climber amputated his own arm Thursday, five days after becoming pinned by a boulder, and he was hiking to safety when he was spotted by searchers, authorities said.
Aron Ralston, 27, of Aspen, was in serious condition late Thursday at a hospital in Grand Junction, Colo.
Ralston was climbing Saturday in Blue John Canyon, adjacent to Canyonlands National Park in far southwestern Utah, when a 200-pound boulder fell on him, pinning his right arm, authorities said.
He ran out of water on Tuesday and on Thursday morning, he decided that his survival required drastic action.
Using his pocketknife, he amputated his arm below the elbow and applied a tourniquet and administered first aid.
He then rigged anchors, fixed a rope and rappelled to the canyon floor.
He hiked downstream and was spotted about 3 p.m. by a Utah Public Safety Helicopter.
Beached whale dies
BIG PINE KEY, Fla. -- The largest of the pilot whales that were being nursed back to health by volunteers following an April 18 stranding off the Florida Keys has died.
The 11-foot-long, 1,200-pound mammal was among 28 that stranded themselves in shallow waters near Big Pine Key. Of those, eight have now died, six were euthanized, nine are unaccounted and five remain in a semi-enclosed boat basin at Big Pine Key.
"It seemed inevitable," said Rick Trout, animal care director of the Keys-based Marine Mammal Conservancy. "This guy had blood results that suggested he was going downhill. For the last three nights he had people doing all they could do."
He estimated that the whale was about 20 years old. A necropsy is scheduled to be performed today.
Trout said four of the five surviving whales are showing signs of progress.
Is debris from shuttle?
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. -- An odd assortment of material has been hauled from New Mexico's rugged mountains and investigators suspect it could be debris from the space shuttle Columbia.
The material includes chunks of mysterious chalky matter and shiny black cinders that look like hardened tar but easily crumble. All of it has been sent to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
If any of the tests prove positive, it would mark the westernmost point -- by 250 miles or so -- that shuttle debris has been found, offering possibly critical physical clues to the earliest stages of the doomed spacecraft's Feb. 1 breakup.
White-only prom
ALBANY, Ga. -- Gerica McCrary said she cried when she heard about the decision to hold a separate white-only prom only a year after she helped bring black and white students together in her rural high school's first integrated prom.
Many white students at Taylor County High School said they plan to attend next week's mixed prom, but a small number of whites said they also wanted a private party.
Juniors are charged with planning the prom each year and last year they decided to have just one dance -- the first integrated prom in 31 years in the rural Georgia county 150 miles south of Atlanta.
Until then, parents and students organized separate proms for whites and blacks after school officials stopped sponsoring dances, in part because they wanted to avoid problems arising from interracial dating.
After school integration, separate proms were common in the rural South. Taylor County was among the last to cling to the practice.
Erin Posey, a white senior, said the entire junior class joined together in hosting last year's prom, but this year's junior class wasn't as unified. "I think a lot of seniors were disappointed," she said. "Now we have to choose between two groups of friends."