Kids to go back to parents

Kids to go back to parents

SAN ANTONIO — In a crushing blow to the state’s massive seizure of children from a polygamist sect’s ranch, the Texas Supreme Court ruled Thursday that child welfare officials overstepped their authority and the children should go back to their parents.

The high court affirmed a decision by an appellate court last week, saying Child Protective Services failed to show an immediate danger to the more than 400 children swept up from the Yearning For Zion Ranch nearly two months ago.

Army suicides rose in ’07

WASHINGTON — The number of Army suicides increased again last year, amid the most violent year yet in both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

An Army official said Thursday that 115 troops committed suicide in 2007, a nearly 13 percent increase over the previous year’s 102. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because a full report on the deaths wasn’t being released until later Thursday.

About a quarter of the deaths occurred in Iraq.

Suicides have been rising during the five-year-old war in Iraq and nearly seven years of war in Afghanistan.

War ammo under review

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — The military is reviewing soldiers’ complaints that their standard ammunition isn’t powerful enough for the type of fighting required in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army’s highest-ranking officer said Thursday. But Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the Army chief of staff, said it was too soon to say whether the Pentagon will switch.

Current and former soldiers interviewed by The Associated Press said the military’s M855 rifle rounds are not powerful enough for close-in fighting in cities and towns in Iraq and Afghanistan.

New data on Stonehenge

WASHINGTON — England’s enigmatic Stonehenge served as a burial ground from its earliest beginnings and for several hundred years thereafter, new research indicates.

Dating of cremated remains shows burials took place as early as 3000 B.C., when the first ditches around the monument were being built, researchers said Thursday. And those burials continued for at least 500 years, when the giant stones that mark the mysterious circle were being erected, they said.

World’s tiniest bowl

TOKYO — Japanese scientists say they have used cutting-edge technology to create a noodle bowl so small it can be seen only through a microscope.

Mechanical engineering professor Masayuki Nakao said Thursday he and his students at the University of Tokyo used a carbon-based material to produce a noodle bowl with a diameter 1‚Ñ25,000 of an inch in a project aimed at developing nanotube-processing technology.

The Japanese-style ramen bowl was carved out of microscopic nanotubes, Nakao said. Nanotubes are tube-shaped pieces of carbon, measuring about one-ten-thousandth of the thickness of a human hair.

Historic-bridge makeover

JOHNSTOWN, Pa. — Johnstown’s historic 121-year-old Stone Bridge is getting a $1.2 million makeover.

The bridge was built over the Conemaugh River by the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1887.

Two years later, the bridge played a key role in the first of three cataclysmic floods that have hit this former steel town about 60 miles east of Pittsburgh.

Heavy rains caused a mountainside dam to burst upstream on May 31, 1889. The wall of water killed more than 2,200 people and picked up entire homes and other debris that crashed into the bridge, caught fire and burned for days.

Because the bridge held, it is believed some flood damage was lessened downstream.

Franken worries Dems

WASHINGTON — Senate candidate Al Franken’s satirical and explicit take on virtual sex and other topics, published in Playboy magazine eight years ago, is drawing concern instead of laughter from some Minnesota Democrats.

Rep. Betty McCollum, who supported the comedian’s rival Mike Ciresi until he dropped out of the race for the party’s nomination for the Senate, complained Thursday that she and other Minnesota Democrats will be on the same November ballot as a candidate “who has pornographic writings that are indefensible.”

Franken, a former “Saturday Night Live” writer and performer and a best-selling author, is the Democratic front-runner to take on Republican Sen. Norm Coleman. Minnesota Democrats hold an endorsing convention next week and a primary Sept. 9.

Associated Press