HFACING MULTIPLE CHARGES

hFacing multiple charges
NEW YORK -- Police transport Cesar Ascarrunz to central booking after arresting him in the murder of 26-year-old Monica Lozada-Rivaineira.
Ascarrunz, 32, is also accused of leaving Lozada-Rivaineira's 4-year-old daughter, Valery, on a Queens street. He was arraigned Sunday on multiple counts, including murder, endangering the welfare of a child and tampering with evidence.
Police were led to Ascarrunz by tips from the public after Valery appeared on TV on Thursday. The child, her hair in pigtails, described her mother as looking "like a princess." Police ultimately used records from Valery's day-care center to identify her mother.
"This child has captured the hearts of all New Yorkers," said District Attorney Richard A. Brown. "I hope she can grow up to lead a normal life."
Prize-winning playwrightAugust Wilson dies at 60
NEW YORK -- Playwright August Wilson, whose epic 10-play cycle chronicling the black experience in 20th-century America includedsuch landmark dramas as "Fences" and "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom," died Sunday of liver cancer, a family spokeswoman said. He was 60.
Wilson died at Swedish Hospital in Seattle, surrounded by his family, said Dena Levitin, Wilson's personal assistant. The playwright disclosed in late August that his illness was inoperable and he had only a few months to live.
Wilson's plays were big, often sprawling and poetic, dealing primarily with the effects of slavery on succeeding generations of black Americans: from turn-of-century characters who could remember the Civil War to a prosperous middle class at the end of the century who had forgotten the past.
Wilson received the best-play Tony Award for "Fences," plus best-play Tony nominations for six of his other plays, the Pulitzer Prize for both "Fences" and "The Piano Lesson," and a record seven New York Drama Critics' Circle prizes.
Despite his indictment,DeLay pledges to do job
WASHINGTON -- A defiant Tom DeLay, removed as House majority leader because of a criminal indictment, said Sunday he can do his job even without the title and pledged to continue his close partnership with House Speaker Dennis Hastert in pushing the GOP's agenda.
The Texas Republican known for keeping colleagues in line and raising prodigious amounts of cash to help elect GOP candidates said he is only guilty of working to defeat Democrats. "But that's not illegal," he said.
Yet some House Republicans said the fund-raising conspiracy case in Texas has plunged DeLay back into the GOP pack. "He's lost his office. He's lost his staff. And he's now basically a rank-and-file member who has a lot of friends and will still have influence," said Connecticut Rep. Christopher Shays, a moderate Republican.
Food rationing in N. Korea
SEOUL, South Korea -- North Korea plans to resume full-scale food rationing across the impoverished communist country after ending grain sales, a U.N. relief agency said.
"As of Oct. 1, reports are that cereal sales in the markets will cease and public distribution centers will take over countrywide distribution," the World Food Program said in a Friday-dated report posted on its Web site. North Korea significantly scaled back its food-rationing system in July 2002 while introducing an economic reform program that increased wages. The reform measures failed, however, as inflation soared amid shortages of food and other goods.
1 dies in cruise ship fire
BRATISLAVA, Slovakia -- A cruise ship on the Danube River caught fire Sunday, and a burned body believed to be that of a missing crew member was discovered, officials said.
Firefighters evacuated 77 tourists -- most from Norway -- from the ship, which was heading from Romania to the Austrian capital, Vienna.
"Since only one person, a crew member, was missing ... it is likely that we have found her," said Ivan Petko, a spokesman for regional firefighters.
Associated Press