Justices stay execution

Justices stay execution

MIAMI — Four hours before convicted child killer Mark Dean Schwab was to die Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court stopped his execution, giving the court time to review constitutional questions raised about the death penalty. It was the second time in two days that Schwab’s execution was blocked. A federal court in Orlando ruled Wednesday that the execution should not go forward. That ruling was overturned Thursday morning by a three-judge appeals panel in Atlanta. Schwab was scheduled to die by lethal injection at 6 p.m. for the 1991 rape and murder of Junny Rios-Martinez, an 11-year-old boy from Cocoa Beach in Brevard County, Fla. He will remain on death row until the Supreme Court completes its review of two Kentucky cases to determine if the chemical concoction used in the lethal injection procedure is unconstitutionally cruel-and-unusual punishment. High court stays also have halted executions in several other states.

Pot pies again being made

OMAHA, Neb. — The USDA allowed ConAgra Foods Inc. to resume making its Banquet and private label pot pies because the company corrected the flaws in its safety plan at its Missouri plant that inspectors found after the pies were linked to a salmonella outbreak. Those pot pies were recalled last month after hundreds of people who ate them became ill. A spokeswoman for the Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service said Thursday that ConAgra took action to correct the problems inspectors found after the Oct. 11 recall. ConAgra announced Wednesday that it had resumed making pot pies at the Marshall, Mo., plant, and the company expects the pies to return to stores sometime in January.

Nazi suspect deported

CHICAGO — An immigration judge in Chicago has ordered the deportation of an elderly North Side man who allegedly hid the details of his World War II service in a Nazi-controlled police force. The decision, announced Thursday by the U.S. Justice Department, came two years after Osyp Firishchak, 88, a retired carpenter, had his U.S. citizenship revoked after a trial. At the trial, Justice Department lawyers presented a series of documents showing that an Osyp Firishchak born on the same day and in the same town as the defendant belonged to the Nazi-controlled Ukrainian Auxiliary Police. Authorities said the unit assisted Nazi soldiers in rounding up, beating and killing tens of thousands of Jews, though the Justice Department leveled no specific allegations that Firishchak took part in the slaughter.

Fight for Anne Frank tree

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands — Hiding from the Nazis in a cramped Amsterdam apartment, Anne Frank often gazed at a majestic chestnut tree visible through an attic skylight — her only window to the outside world — and dreamed of freedom. Now a group of conservationists and local activists are fighting to prevent the badly diseased tree from being cut down, saying it is a living link to the memory of the teenage diarist, who died in a Nazi concentration camp at 15. “It’s a monument to the spirit of what Anne Frank wrote — hope and light, which she did not have,” said Sylvio Mutal, a neighbor whose study overlooks the courtyard where the tree is located. Mutal, a former consultant to the United Nations on preservation of monuments, called a decision Tuesday by the city of Amsterdam to fell the tree next week a “betrayal,” after earlier promises to wait until Jan. 1 to consider a salvage plan. “I’m not doubting the tree is sick and may have to be cut,” he said. “What I’m saying is, I want a second opinion.” The tree suffers from a fungus that has caused more than half its trunk to rot. The city ordered it cut down next Wednesday, citing an appraisal that said it was in imminent danger of falling. But opponents, including the Netherlands’ Trees Institute, challenged the decision as hasty and argued the tree is a living historical monument worthy of extraordinary measures to save.

Strike in France continues

PARIS — France’s transport strike eased but did not end Thursday, after President Nicolas Sarkozy accepted negotiations while refusing to budge on his campaign-trail promise that cushy retirement benefits must go. Frustrated commuters, many of whom had to walk, pedal or rollerblade to work, urged Sarkozy to hang tough, saying France needs economic reforms to thrive. With Sarkozy in power for just six months, the strikes represent the first major union challenge to his plans to modernize France — and he said Wednesday he wanted the strikes to end quickly. Rail and transport workers’ unions vowed to press the walkout into a fourth day today, as the government sought to trumpet figures showing that support was fading.

Combined dispatches