hPost-Katrina nuptials

hPost-Katrina nuptials
NEW ORLEANS -- Judge Roland Belsome pronounces Nicole Clark and Rudy Vorkapic husband and wife in front of St. Louis Cathedral. The couple had to cancel their 400-guest wedding in November after Hurricane Katrina but wanted to get married before the new year. They did so Friday afternoon.
Locating sex offenders
WASHINGTON -- Governors in states that accepted Katrina evacuees are being urged to locate about 2,000 registered sex offenders who fled the Gulf region during the hurricane's mayhem and may have vanished from legally required tracking. "When sex offenders know they're being watched, when they know they're being monitored, they are less likely to offend again," said Wade Horn, assistant secretary for children and families at the Health and Human Services Department. "When they no longer believe they are being monitored or watched, they can be tempted to offend again." The Administration for Children and Families estimated that about 30 states are affected. In November, agency officials matched the names on sex offender registries in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama with the names of evacuees who applied for disaster assistance.
Would New Yorkers say'You're hired!' to Trump?
ALBANY, N.Y. -- Donald Trump is considering running for governor, a leading Republican said Friday. Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno on Thursday suggested that a big-name candidate could be flirting with entering the 2006 contest. On Friday, he confirmed to News Channel 10 in Albany that he had been referring to Trump. Bruno told the station he had spoken to the real estate developer and TV personality about a possible run. Trump's office in New York had no immediate comment.
Chihuahuas attack cop
FREMONT, Calif. -- A pack of angry Chihuahuas attacked a police officer who was escorting a teenager home after a traffic stop, authorities said. The officer suffered minor injuries, including bites to his ankle, Detective Bill Veteran said. The five Chihuahuas escaped the 17-year-old boy's home and rushed the officer in the doorway Thursday, authorities said.
Study: Peace is spreadingthroughout the world
QUEBEC -- With the passing of another year scarred by war and terrorism, it might seem the world is becoming a more dangerous and bloody place. But a unique study of wars, genocide, military coups and human rights abuses across the globe has found that our planet has actually turned substantially more peaceful over the past decade. "Over the past dozen years, the global security climate has changed in dramatic, positive, but largely unheralded ways," says the report by the Human Security Centre, located at the University of British Columbia in Canada. "More wars stopped than started" since 1988. The three-year study credits the end of the colonialism and Cold War eras, along with an increase in international peacekeeping and preventive diplomacy, as the factors most responsible for the positive turn of events. The "Human Security Report," which its authors say will be an annual endeavor, identifies international terrorism as the only form of political violence that is accelerating.
Trouble in Gaza Strip
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip -- Palestinian policemen went on a rampage over the killing of a colleague and seized the Gaza-Egypt border crossing for several hours Friday, forcing European monitors to flee in the latest sign of growing mayhem in the coastal strip. A British aid worker and her parents, meanwhile, were freed late Friday, two days after gunmen seized the family in the southern Gaza Strip, Palestinian mediator Kamal Sharafi said, without giving any details of where they were released or who kidnapped them. Friday's border takeover and the kidnapping of the Britons fed worries that chaos in Gaza may be spreading to outsiders brought in to help develop the area following Israel's pullout.