Police free 10 hostages after standoff at store

Police free 10 hostagesafter standoff at store
PASADENA, Calif. -- A robbery attempt at a Blockbuster video store ended early today when law enforcement officials captured three suspects who were holding 10 hostages at gunpoint.
No injuries or shots were reported by the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.
The suspects -- Jason Bridges, 19, Prince Bridges, 18, and Joshua White, 20 -- were arrested on investigation of armed robbery, a deputy said. Bail for each was set at $100,000.
The men had held two employees and eight customers, according to the department.
Sheriff's deputies surrounded the store in the Altadena area just north of Pasadena after the store's alarm was triggered about 10:50 p.m. Monday, authorities said. A SWAT team, an armored car and a canine unit arrived later.
Blackout closes downLas Vegas hotel-casino
LAS VEGAS -- One of the biggest hotel-casinos on the Las Vegas Strip closed Monday and thousands of guests had to check in somewhere else after a main power line failed.
The 3,000-room Bellagio was hit with the partial blackout about 2 a.m. Sunday. Emergency power to the casino came on, providing only a glimmer of light throughout the building.
"I guess I'll have to go to another casino to lose money," Bob Raf, a teacher from Michigan, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
A power line coming into the resort failed, said Alan Feldman, a spokesman for MGM Mirage, which owns the hotel. "We don't know what happened and probably won't for some time," he said Monday.
Feldman said thousands of feet of cable would have to be replaced and the hotel would not reopen until this morning at the earliest.
The power failure caused surveillance cameras to shut down, but a priceless collection of Monet paintings on display was safe, Feldman said. There were no reports of any injuries or thefts.
Suspect commits suicide
PARIS -- A New Jersey man who fled to France after reportedly killing his lover in the United States committed suicide by hanging himself with a bedsheet from a drainage pipe in his French jail cell, his lawyer said today.
Paul Eduardovich Goldman, 39, a naturalized U.S. citizen, killed himself Sunday afternoon in a prison in the suburbs of Grenoble, in the French Alps, even though he was under suicide watch, said attorney Arnaud Levy-Soussan.
"He hanged himself with a sheet in his cell," the lawyer told The Associated Press. "He already tried to commit suicide at the start of his incarceration in January. So he was classed among detainees under special surveillance."
Goldman was caught Jan. 20 in Grenoble, southern France, where his extradition hearing was taking place. He was expected to be extradited to Pennsylvania to face first-degree murder charges in the fatal stabbing of Faina Zonis, 42, a Philadelphia mortgage processor found dead in her office Dec. 29.
Cheney arrives in China
BEIJING -- Vice President Dick Cheney is taking praise to China for its efforts to prod North Korea to give up its nuclear ambitions, but U.S. officials cautioned against expecting a breakthrough.
Cheney arrived in Beijing today, the second stop on his weeklong tour of Asia, amid rising tensions over violence in Iraq.
All three nations on Cheney's itinerary have had civilians taken as hostages in Iraq, although those from South Korea and China have been released. The fate of three Japanese civilians remained uncertain Monday as Cheney wrapped up his three-day visit to Japan.
While relations between the United States and China have improved as the two nations worked together to resolve the North Korean nuclear impasse, differences remain over Taiwan, Hong Kong and human rights.
The Bush administration has been increasingly critical of China for trying to restrict moves toward democracy by Hong Kong, a former British colony now considered a special administrative region of China.
More babies allowed
SHANGHAI, China -- Authorities in Shanghai announced today that divorced couples who remarry will be allowed to have a second child, easing China's controversial one-child per couple rule.
The city is acting under a policy that lets local governments decide how to apply the one-child rule. The easing is meant to reflect social changes in cities such as prosperous, crowded Shanghai, including a divorce rate that has climbed along with incomes after two decades of economic reform.
Since the 1970s, the government has enforced the one-child policy to slow the growth of China's population of 1.3 billion people. Couples who violate the rule can be fined, and activists allege some officials force women to have abortions or to undergo surgery to be sterilized.
Associated Press