Aruban prosecutor: Tape is admissible

Aruban prosecutor:
Tape is admissible

ORANJESTAD, Aruba — A hidden-camera interview with a Dutch student saying missing teenager Natalee Holloway was dead and that he had a friend dump her body at sea is admissible in court, the chief Aruban prosecutor said Monday.

The courts in Aruba will likely accept the tape as evidence because it was recorded by a private citizen without any influence by authorities, Chief Prosecutor Hans Mos told reporters.

“I take it very seriously,” Mos said of the video.

The tape, which was first broadcast Sunday on Dutch television, has appeared to spur the investigation: Mos said authorities in the Netherlands searched two homes Monday where Joran Van der Sloot has lived while attending college there.

A judge in Aruba denied a prosecution arrest to detain Van der Sloot based on the new information. Mos said they will file an appeal today and expect a decision within a week.

Animal rights group calls
on China to respect rats

BEIJING — An animal rights group called Monday for China to treat rats with kindness and respect, as millions across the nation begin to celebrate the coming Year of the Rat.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA, said it has asked the Chinese government to consider animal welfare laws for rats used in laboratory experiments. The group also recommended a series of guidelines for animals used in science.

“Rats sing, they dream and they express empathy for others,” Coco Yu of PETA’s Asia-Pacific branch said in a statement.

China has increasingly become a place of business for international pharmaceutical companies, the group said.

The country has a shoddy animal rights record. There is little animal welfare legislation, many zoos are poorly run and animal parts are traded for use in traditional Chinese medicine. Activists have called on China to phase out bear farms, where bile is harvested for traditional medicine, complaining that the animals are often raised in inhumane conditions.

Astronauts return

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Seven astronauts returned to NASA’s launch site Monday to take a new shot at flying space shuttle Atlantis to the international space station.

Liftoff is set for Thursday afternoon, with NASA wrapping up a last repair Sunday night involving a radiator hose. The mission was waylaid in December by a different problem, erratic fuel gauges.

Atlantis will carry the European Space Agency’s science lab, Columbus, to the orbiting outpost. That will be the second science lab — the United States operates one there already. The largest lab of all, Japan’s Kibo, or Hope, will be carried up in sections beginning next month.

Atlantis’ mission, fraught for weeks with mechanical problems, now faces only weather concerns, NASA officials said.

Last surviving Marine
from flag-raising dies

REDDING, Calif. — Raymond Jacobs, believed to be the last surviving member of the group of Marines photographed during the original U.S. flag-raising on Iwo Jima during World War II, has died at age 82.

Jacobs died Jan. 29 of natural causes at a Redding hospital, his daughter, Nancy Jacobs, told The Associated Press.

Jacobs had spent his later years working to prove that he was the radio operator photographed looking up at an American flag as it was being raised by other Marines on Mount Suribachi on Feb. 23, 1945.

Newspaper accounts from the time show he was on the mountain during the initial raising of a smaller American flag, though he had returned to his unit by the time the more famous AP photograph was taken of a second flag-raising later the same day.

Two skiers found

SAN FRANCISCO — Two skiers who disappeared near Lake Tahoe during a winter storm were rescued Monday morning after they burrowed into snow caves and huddled together for warmth, authorities said.

The two men, described as expert skiers, were spotted by the crew of a Placer County Sheriff’s Department helicopter about seven miles from the Alpine Meadows ski resort, just west of Lake Tahoe.

Patrick Frost, 35, and Christopher Gerwig, 32, both of San Francisco, were picked up near Hell Hole Reservoir, department spokeswoman Kelly Hernandez said.

They were taken to Sutter Auburn Faith Hospital, where spokeswoman Janice Davis said they had suffered “really minor, minor” frostbite.

Associated Press