Aryan Nations founder dies

Aryan Nations founder dies
SPOKANE, Wash. -- Richard G. Butler, the notorious white supremacist who founded the Aryan Nations and was once dubbed the "elder statesman of American hate," has died at the age of 86, authorities said Wednesday.
Butler died peacefully in his sleep at his home in Hayden, Idaho, sheriff's Capt. Ben Wolfinger told The Associated Press. It was not known when he died; his body was found in his bed Wednesday morning.
"Everything appears to be natural," said Wolfinger, of the Kootenai County, Idaho, sheriff's department.
The Aryan Nations lost its church and 20-acre compound in northern Idaho in 2000 after a $6.3 million civil judgment led to a bankruptcy filing. He moved into a house bought by a supporter in Hayden, and made few public appearances in recent years because of failing health.
But in July he rode in the back of a pickup truck that was dragging the flag of Israel during a parade by about 40 of his followers through downtown Coeur d'Alene, 30 miles east of Spokane.
Butler, a longtime admirer of Adolf Hitler and white supremacist religious teaching, had moved to Idaho in the early 1970s, claiming later that he was impressed by its high percentage of white residents. To the dismay of many locals, the region became known as a place hospitable to white supremacist groups.
Peterson murder trial
REDWOOD CITY, Calif. -- Prosecutors in Scott Peterson's double-murder trial tried to counter the defense theory that witnesses saw his pregnant wife in a nearby park after the former fertilizer salesman left for what he claims was a solo fishing trip the morning she was reported missing.
Prosecutors called a string of women to the stand late Wednesday, all of whom were pregnant at the same time as Laci Peterson and walked for exercise in the same area, in an attempt to show that witnesses might have seen someone else. The defense was expected to begin its case early next month.
"A lot of this week has been the prosecutors playing defense," said former San Francisco prosecutor and trial observer Jim Hammer. "They're trying to anticipate defense attacks on their case."
Earlier Wednesday, a DNA expert testified that at least one strand of dark hair found on Peterson's boat probably came from his dead wife.
Prosecutors say the hair found in a pair of pliers is significant because Laci allegedly was never on the boat while alive and was even unaware her husband had bought one.
Defense lawyers don't concede the hair belonged to Laci and have offered innocent explanations for how it might have ended up there, including that she was once on the boat or that it may have fallen from Scott Peterson's clothing.
Scientists pick up piecesof crashed space capsule
DUGWAY PROVING GROUND, Utah -- Scientists with tweezers picked through the twisted wreckage of a space capsule that crash-landed on Earth, hoping that microscopic clues to the evolution of the solar system weren't completely lost in Utah's salt flats.
NASA engineers were stunned Wednesday when neither parachute deployed aboard the Genesis capsule and the craft plummeted to the ground at 193 mph, breaking open like a clamshell and exposing its collection of solar atoms to contamination.
"There was a big pit in my stomach," said physicist Roger Wiens of Los Alamos National Laboratory. "This just wasn't supposed to happen. We're going to have a lot of work picking up the pieces."
The capsule held billions of charged atoms -- a total haul no bigger than a few grains of salt -- that were harvested from solar wind on five collecting disks during the 884-day, $260-million mission.
U.S. seeks world helpin pressuring Sudan
WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration is seeking increased international pressure on Sudan to end abuses in the Darfur region, while debating whether the situation there should be classified as genocide.
Secretary of State Colin Powell has been reviewing details of what he has called the "catastrophic" humanitarian crisis in Darfur and was sharing his thoughts today with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
An interagency team of U.S. experts spent more than a month interviewing 1,136 refugees from Darfur in neighboring Chad. Powell has been analyzing a summary of the interviews as part of an effort to determine whether the attacks by Arab militias on non-Arab African tribes constitute genocide.
As a result of actions by the militias, known as Janjaweed, tens of thousands have died and more than 1.2 million have been displaced from their homes.
At the United Nations on Wednesday, the United States circulated a draft that calls for a stronger international force to monitor the situation in Darfur.
Associated Press