Postal Service lifts curtain on ’09 stamps

Postal Service lifts curtain on ’09 stamps

WASHINGTON — Lucy and Ethel lose their struggle with a chocolate assembly line. Joe Friday demands “just the facts” with a penetrating gaze. A secret word brings Groucho a visit from a duck.

Folks who grew up as television came of age will delight in a 20-stamp set included in the Postal Service’s plans for 2009 recalling early memories of the medium.

Most of the commemorative stamps are priced at 42 cents, the current first-class rate. However, a rate increase is scheduled in May and the size will depend on the consumer price index.

Victims of avalanches recovered in Canada

FERNIE, British Columbia — Six bodies were recovered Monday a day after two avalanches buried eight snowmobilers in western Canada’s backcountry, police said.

The bodies were found late afternoon after a search team plowed through avalanche debris in Fernie, in British Columbia’s Elk Valley, about 550 miles east of Vancouver.

Three men from the group clawed through the snow and survived the back-to-back avalanches Sunday.

Two other men were still missing and presumed dead, said Royal Canadian Mounted Police Cpl. Chris Faulkner.

Search efforts had been delayed until later Monday by the threat of more avalanches.

Somali president resigns

MOGADISHU, Somalia — Somalia’s president resigned Monday after a four-year term in which his Western-backed government failed to extend its power throughout a country crippled by infighting and a strengthening Islamic insurgency.

Abdullahi Yusuf’s resignation, which comes amid deepening international pressure, could usher in more chaos as Islamic militants scramble for power — even though the government controls only pockets of the capital, Mogadishu, and the seat of parliament in Baidoa.

Within hours of the announcement, mortar shells slammed into the streets near the presidential palace in Mogadishu.

Church massacre in Congo

KAMPALA, Uganda — Attackers hacked to death scores of people who sought refuge at a Catholic church in remote eastern Congo the day after Christmas, officials and witnesses said Monday, and the Ugandan army and a rebel group accused each other of carrying out the massacre.

Survivors and witnesses said the killings occurred close to Congo’s border with Sudan, near to where the armies of those two countries and Uganda began an offensive this month to root out the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army, according to Ugandan army spokesman Capt. Chris Magezi.

Lawyer: Impeachment of Blagojevich not warranted

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s lawyer said Monday that a vague array of charges and evidence doesn’t merit removing the governor from office, and he urged a House committee not to recommend impeachment.

Attorney Ed Genson complained bitterly that lawmakers were considering snippets of tape-recorded conversations that are quoted in a criminal complaint against the Democratic governor. He said no one knows the full context of those remarks or whether they are quoted accurately.

N.Y. girl accused in slayings

NEW YORK — With her slight frame and big grin, Sharell Butler still looks like a child. But the 15-year-old has been charged as an adult with killing two men over three days, including one whose dismembered remains were found in a garbage bag.

Butler pleaded innocent over the weekend to second-degree murder in the deaths of 24-year-old Christopher Umpierre on Dec. 19 and 22-year-old John Hopkins-Drago on Dec. 21. She was being held without bail Monday.

Her attorney, Xavier Donaldson, referred to her as “just a kid” and said she is scared.

Police say Sharrell Butler and others stabbed Hopkins-Drago at an apartment in the Bronx, perhaps as many as 40 times. A superintendent found the dismembered body stuffed in a garbage can outside a building the same day he was killed.

Associated Press