Storms make landfall

Storms make landfall

CABO SAN LUCAS, Mexico — Felix walloped Central America’s remote Miskito coastline, and Henriette slammed into resorts on the tip of Baja California as a record-setting hurricane season got even wilder Tuesday with twin storms making landfall on the same day.

While weakening rapidly, Felix’s rains posed a danger to inland villages lying in flood-prone mountain valleys and to urban shantytowns susceptible to mudslides.

Felix roared ashore before dawn as a Category 5 storm along Nicaragua’s remote northeast corner — an isolated, swampy jungle where people get around mainly by canoe. The 160 mph winds peeled roofs off shelters and a police station, knocked down electric poles and stripped humble homes to a few walls.

“The metal roofs are coming off like straight razors and flying against the trees and homes,” Lumberto Campbell, a local official in Puerto Cabezas, near Felix’s landfall, told Radio Ya shortly before his phone line went dead.

New toy recall announced

NEW YORK — The Consumer Product Safety Commission, in cooperation with Mattel Inc., announced late Tuesday that it is recalling about 700,000 Chinese-made toys that have excessive amounts of lead paint.

The recall covers 675,000 units of various Barbie accessory toys that were manufactured between Sept. 30, 2006, and Aug. 20, 2007. The action also involves 8,900 toys involving Big Big World 6-in-I Bongo Band toys from the company’s Fisher-Price brand. Those products were sold nationwide from July 2007 through Aug. 2007.

The announcement marks Mattel’s third major recall of Chinese-made toys because of lead paint in a matter of a month.

Mattel’s last recall, announced Aug. 14, covered about 19 million toys worldwide. They included Chinese-made toys that either had excessive amounts of lead paint or had small magnets that could easily be swallowed by children.

Millionaire adventurer
Steve Fossett missing

MINDEN, Nev. — Millionaire adventurer Steve Fossett, who has cheated death time and again in his successful pursuit of aviation records, was missing Tuesday after taking off in a single-engine plane the day before to scout locations for a land-speed record, officials said. Teams searched a broad swath of rugged terrain in western Nevada near the ranch where he took off, but searchers had little to go on because he apparently didn’t file a flight plan, a Federal Aviation Administration spokesman said.

“They are working on some leads, but they don’t know where he is right now,” FAA spokesman Ian Gregor said.

China denies hacking
into Pentagon computers

BEIJING — China denied a report Tuesday that its military had hacked into Pentagon computers, saying the allegations were “groundless” and that Beijing was opposed to cybercrime.

The Financial Times, citing unnamed officials, reported Monday that the People’s Liberation Army hacked into a computer system in the office of Defense Secretary Robert Gates in June. The attack forced officials to take down the network for more than a week, the report said.

“Some people make groundless accusations against China” that its military attacked the Pentagon, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said at a regular news briefing.

“China has all along been opposed to and forbids criminal activities undermining computer networks, including hacking,” she said. “China is ready to strengthen cooperation with other countries, including the U.S., in countering Internet crimes.”

Senator reconsidering
resigning, spokesman says

BOISE, Idaho — Sen. Larry Craig is reconsidering his decision to resign after his arrest in a Minnesota airport sex sting and may still fight for his Senate seat, his spokesman said Tuesday evening.

“It’s not such a foregone conclusion anymore, that the only thing he could do was resign,” said Sidney Smith, Craig’s spokesman in Idaho’s capital.

“We’re still preparing as if Senator Craig will resign Sept. 30, but the outcome of the legal case in Minnesota and the ethics investigation will have an impact on whether we’re able to stay in the fight — and stay in the Senate.”

Craig, a Republican who has represented Idaho in Congress for 27 years, announced Saturday that he intends to resign from the Senate on Sept. 30. But since then, he’s hired a prominent lawyer to investigate the possibility of reversing his plea, his spokesman said.

Craig was a no-show Tuesday as Congress reconvened after a summer break, and it wasn’t clear whether he’ll return at all since deciding to resign over his guilty plea in a sex sting this summer at the Minneapolis airport.

Associated Press