Bomb supplies found

Bomb supplies found

COLUMBIA, S.C. — Authorities say an 18-year-old South Carolina student is behind bars after collecting the supplies needed to bomb his school.

Bryan Schillenberger was arrested Saturday after his parents called police when 10 pounds of ammonium nitrate was delivered to their home in Chesterfield.

Police Chief Randall Lear says the teen planned to make several bombs. Lear says he had all the supplies needed to kill dozens of people at Chesterfield High.

Lear says a journal Schillenberger kept for more than a year had detailed plans, including maps of the school.

Several people shot

IRVINGTON, N.J. — A gunman shot a driver stopped at a traffic light and killed a pedestrian early Sunday, and the same man may be responsible for the shooting of a police sergeant in his patrol car, authorities said.

The three shootings took place within minutes in the same general area of Irvington, in northern New Jersey, around 3 a.m. Sunday, said Paul Loriquet, Essex County prosecutor’s office spokesman.

Police later accused Shaquan Johnson, 27, of Newark of shooting the police officer, and authorities were investigating his possible involvement in the other two shootings. He was in jail Sunday night on $500,000 bail.

Message in a bottle

TITUSVILLE, Fla. — A Bahamian girl’s seaborne school project has landed on the sandy doorstep of NASA.

United Space Alliance worker Jill Vogel found a message in a bottle from a pupil at the Holy Name Catholic School in Bimini, about 220 miles southeast of Titusville and closest to Florida of all the Bahamas islands.

Vogel recently found the bottle while volunteering for a beach cleanup near the space shuttle launch pads at Kennedy Space Center, Florida Today reported Saturday.

Vogel and others have collected space memorabilia — crew photos, pins, stickers and other NASA gear — to send to the 9-year-old girl and her classmates

Courtroom artist dies

LOS ANGELES — Rosalie Ritz, a premier courtroom artist who for four decades chronicled dozens of high-drama trials, including those of Charles Manson, Patty Hearst and O.J. Simpson, has died. She was 84.

She died at her home in Walnut Creek in Northern California on Friday night after a two-year battle with lung cancer, her daughter Sandy Ritz told The Associated Press.

Ritz’s work was seen on network TV and on AP wires beginning with the infamous Army-McCarthy hearings in the 1950s. Soon after, she began drawing in courtrooms.

Contractor likely dead

ALBANY, N.Y. — The family of a contractor kidnapped in Iraq said Sunday that U.S. officials have notified them they’ve found a body that could be his.

The family of Jonathon Cote said on the Web site Free Cote that an unidentified sixth body has been recovered near Basra, in southern Iraq.

Cote was one of six Western contractors kidnapped in two separate incidents. The Getzville, N.Y., resident was working in Kuwait for Crescent Security Group when he and four colleagues were abducted in November 2006.

Toddler blown into lake

CHICAGO — A lakefront stroll on a warm, breezy afternoon turned dramatic Friday when a 2-year-old boy was apparently blown into Lake Michigan in his stroller and his grandfather, who a witness said could barely swim, jumped in after him.

The child, unconscious when Chicago Fire Department divers pulled him from Belmont Harbor about 2:30 p.m., remained in critical condition at Children’s Memorial Hospital, according to authorities.

The boy is believed to have been under water for at least 15 minutes. The 60-year-old grandfather was in fair to serious condition and being treated at St. Joseph Hospital for exposure to water that officials said was about 42 degrees.

Newsman’s death probed

JERUSALEM — The Israeli army announced Sunday it will investigate the killing of a cameraman for the Reuters news agency, after a human rights group said it found evidence suggesting that an Israeli tank crew fired recklessly or deliberately at the journalist.

Cameraman Fadel Shana, 23, was killed in Gaza on Wednesday, the bloodiest day of fighting between Israeli troops and Gaza militants in a month. Just before his death, Shana was filming an Israeli tank in the distance, and his final footage shows the tank firing a shell in his direction.

Bishop leads election

ASUNCION, Paraguay — Four exit polls projected former Roman Catholic Bishop Fernando Lugo winning enough votes in Sunday’s election to end six decades of one-party rule in Paraguay, but his rival disputed the polls and vowed to wait for official results.

Lugo, sometimes called “the bishop of the poor,” campaigned on a platform of helping the poor and indigenous, and ending the Colorado Party’s 61-year rule in this landlocked, nation. His ruling party rival, Blanca Ovelar, was seeking to become Paraguay’s first female president.

Supporters of Lugo, 56, set off fireworks in celebration after the exit poll results were released and the candidate briefly appeared at his campaign headquarters before a crush of cheering sympathizers.

Saudi gender bias

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — The Saudi government should abide by international obligations and abolish polices that “grossly” discriminate against women, a report by a leading human rights group said.

In the report being released today, New York-based Human Rights Watch called on the U.S.-allied kingdom to end the practice of sex segregation and polices that make male relatives the legal guardians of women.

The report draws on more than 100 interviews with Saudi Arabian women, documenting the effects that those policies have on their rights.

Law change sought

LONDON — The British government is seeking to abolish an 18th-century royal succession law that requires the daughter of a monarch to make way for her younger brother, a Sunday newspaper reported.

Solicitor General Vera Baird was quoted by The Sunday Times as saying the 1701 law giving male heirs the right to succeed to the throne ahead of any older sisters was unfair and “a load of rubbish.”

The government is expected to use new equality legislation to guarantee women’s succession rights, the Times report said.

Queen Elizabeth II succeeded to the throne only because she had no brothers.

Combined dispatches