Surgeons to operate on baby born with 2 heads

Surgeons to operateon baby born with 2 heads
SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic -- A Dominican infant born with a second head will undergo a risky operation Friday to remove the appendage, which has a partially formed brain, ears, eyes and lips.
The surgery is complicated because the two heads share arteries.
Led by a Los Angeles-based neurosurgeon who successfully separated Guatemalan twins, the medical team will spend about 13 hours removing Rebeca Martinez's second head.
The 18 surgeons, nurses and doctors will cut off the undeveloped tissue, clip the veins and arteries and close the skull of the 7-week-old baby using a bone graft from another part of her body.
"We know this is a delicate operation," Rebeca's father, Franklyn Martinez, 28, told The Associated Press. "But we have a positive attitude."
CURE International, a Lemoyne, Pa.-based charity that gives medical care to disabled children in developing countries, is paying for the surgery and follow-up care.
Five whites face chargesin attack on black men
SPRINGFIELD, Mo. -- Five white men have been indicted on charges of stabbing a black man and threatening another at a Denny's restaurant in 2001, federal authorities said Wednesday.
The indictment follows a three-year investigation into a group of white men described by witnesses as wearing T-shirts touting the white supremacist group Aryan Nation and having swastika tattoos. They are accused of stabbing the man after exchanging words when he and a friend entered the restaurant with two white women.
A three-count federal indictment, handed up by the grand jury Jan. 26 and unsealed Wednesday, alleges the men used a knife and threats to prevent Maurice Wilson and Kenny Wright from dining at the Springfield restaurant, and that the men were motivated by race.
Wilson was stabbed three times and has since recovered. Wright was threatened with a knife but was not physically injured, authorities said.
Charged are Steven A. Heldenbrand, 26; Kenneth Francis Johnsen, 27; Mark Thomas Kooms, 27, Michael Shane McCormick, 29; and Michael Angelo Osorio, 23. Heldenbrand is a Missouri prison inmate.
Going to sea in a Buick
MIAMI -- Eleven Cubans trying to sail to Florida in a 1950s Buick converted into a tailfinned boat were intercepted at sea by the Coast Guard and will be sent back to their homeland, exile activists said Wednesday.
Marciel Basanta Lopez and Luis Grass Rodriguez, the two men who turned the classic car into a floating vessel, tried a similar stunt last summer and got caught.
On Monday, the men set out again, with four other adults and five children, relatives said. The Coast Guard intercepted the group late Tuesday en route to the Florida Keys, picking them up about 10 miles off Marathon, which is about 90 miles southwest of Miami, activist Arturo Cobo said.
Cobo said the Coast Guard sank the Buick. The Coast Guard refused to confirm the floating car's status, but it used machine gun fire to sink the first vehicle-powered barge.
Three men sue diocese
PITTSBURGH -- The leaders of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh protected and reassigned priests they knew or should have known were sexually abusing children, according to three lawsuits filed Wednesday on behalf of three alleged victims.
The plaintiffs, now adults, accuse three priests of sexually abusing them as children in unrelated episodes that occurred as long ago as 1965. The suit lists the defendants as the diocese, along with Bishop Donald Wuerl and Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua, the former head of the Philadelphia archdiocese.
Richard M. Serbin, of the Altoona law firm of Serbin, Kovacs & amp; Nypaver, and Alan H. Perer, of the Pittsburgh law firm of Swensen, Perer & amp; Kontos, said the statute of limitations prevents legal action against the priests.
Serbin and Perer filed the lawsuits on behalf of Robert W. Wagner, Chris Matthews and a third man who did not want to be identified.
Pardon for scientist?
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Pakistan's Cabinet recommended a pardon today for Abdul Qadeer Khan after the father of the "Islamic bomb" apologized for leaking nuclear technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea.
At a special meeting, the Cabinet "decided to forward its recommendations to the President [Gen. Pervez Musharraf] to pardon the scientist," the government said in a statement.
In a televised apology Wednesday after meeting Musharraf, Khan accepted full responsibility for nuclear leaks he said were made without government approval and asked for forgiveness.
Associated Press