Stepfather on trial in death of girl, 7

Stepfather on trial in death of girl, 7

NEW YORK — A prosecutor used a gruesome crime scene photo in her closing argument Wednesday as she scolded a man accused of killing his starving stepdaughter for sneaking some yogurt. The man’s defense argued the child’s mother was responsible for the death.

“There is nothing that 7-year-old Nixzmary Brown could ever do to deserve that,” Assistant District Attorney Ama Dwimoh said of the girl’s battered corpse — skeletal, topless and splayed on a wooden floor.

Earlier, the defense had sought to convince jurors that, even though 29-year-old Cesar Rodriguez had punished an unruly Nixzmary with beatings, her “demented” mother was the killer.

The defendant pleaded innocent to killing Nixzmary on Jan. 11, 2006, with a blow to the head after catching her with yogurt. Authorities said the victim had been routinely bound to a small chair, whipped with a belt and forced to use a cat litter box as a toilet — allegations that shocked the city and hastened child welfare reforms.

The prosecution’s case relied heavily on a taped interview of Rodriguez saying that on Nixzmary’s last night he stuck her head under running bath water “to make her think.” Investigators suspect the girl’s head was smashed against the faucet — something her stepfather denied doing.

Ferraro resigns

WASHINGTON — Former Democratic vice presidential nominee Geraldine Ferraro resigned Wednesday from Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s finance committee after her suggestion that Sen. Barack Obama is where he is politically because he is black touched off a renewed round of charges that Clinton’s allies are injecting race into the campaign.

Ferraro, a former New York congresswoman and the first woman to run on a major-party ticket, did not apologize for her comments but said that she was resigning because “the Obama campaign is attacking me to hurt you” and that she would not let that happen.

In an appearance Wednesday night before the National Newspaper Publishers Association, which represents more than 200 black community newspapers, Clinton was asked whether she has “done enough to send a message that these kinds of insensitive comments will not be tolerated.”

Clinton replied that “I certainly do repudiate” the remarks. “She doesn’t speak for the campaign,” she said of Ferraro. “She has resigned from being a member of my very large finance team.”

Clinton distanced herself from Ferraro on Tuesday after the comments, implicitly linking her comments to those of Samantha Powers, an Obama aide who called Clinton a “monster” and then resigned. Clinton said it was “regrettable” that any of her supporters, or Obama’s, “say things that veer off into the personal.”

Asked Wednesday night at the meeting of black publishers whether she could “regain the confidence and the trust of the African American community” after her husband’s remark, Clinton replied: “I am sorry if anyone was offended. It was certainly not meant in any way to be offensive. We can be proud of both Jesse Jackson and Senator Obama.”

3 killed in roof collapse

MONTREAL — The snow-covered roof of a food warehouse in Canada caved in on Wednesday, killing three women who were crushed below the weight of debris. The women were located by rescuers hours after they were trapped under the rubble at the site of the collapse in Morin Heights, north of Montreal. All three were taken by ambulance to a hospital where they were pronounced dead on arrival.

French WWI vet dies

PARIS — France’s last remaining veteran of World War I died Wednesday at age 110 after outliving 8.4 million Frenchmen who fought in what they called “la Grande Guerre.”

Lazare Ponticelli, who was born in Italy but chose to fight for France and was a French citizen for most of the past century, died at his home in the Paris suburb of Kremlin-Bicetre, the national veterans’ office said.

“It is to him and his generation that we owe in large part the peaceful and pacified Europe of today. It is up to us to be worthy of that,” President Nicolas Sarkozy said in a statement.

France planned a national funeral ceremony Monday honoring Ponticelli and all the “poilus,” an affectionate term meaning hairy or tough that the French use for their soldiers who fought in World War I.

The 1914-1918 conflict, known at the time as the Great War or the “war to end all wars,” tore Europe apart and killed millions.

Combined dispatches