Gun ban in parks stands

Gun ban in parks stands

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration said Friday it will not appeal a federal court ruling that prohibits carrying loaded guns in national parks and wildlife refuges.

Instead, the Interior Department said it will conduct a full environmental review of an earlier policy that allowed concealed, loaded guns in parks and refuges.

U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly struck down the gun policy last month. She called the rule, issued in the waning days of the Bush administration, severely flawed and said officials failed to evaluate its possible environmental impacts, as required by law. The judge set an April 20 deadline for the Interior Department to indicate its likely response.

The Bush rule, which took effect in January, allowed visitors to carry a loaded gun into a park or wildlife refuge as long as the person had a permit for a concealed weapon and the state where the park or refuge was located allowed concealed firearms.

SAG, studios reach deal

LOS ANGELES — The Screen Actors Guild and the Hollywood studios said Friday they have reached a tentative deal on movie and prime-time TV show productions, capping a yearlong battle that ended with the guild giving up its fight for better Internet compensation.

The guild said its leaders would recommend approval by the board and ratification by its members, which could be completed next month. The contract would replace one that had expired last June.

Cyber security review

WASHINGTON — The White House says a 60-day review of the nation’s cyber security is finished and a report has been submitted to the president.

The report comes amid dire warnings that the U.S. is ill-prepared for a cyber attack. The study looked at how the government can better manage and use technology to protect everything from the nation’s electrical grid and stock markets to tax data, airline flight systems and nuclear launch codes.

Officials have acknowledged that government computer networks are constantly assailed by attacks and scans, ranging from nuisance hacking to more nefarious assaults, possibly from other nations, such as China.

West hit by spring snow

DENVER — More than a foot of wet, heavy snow closed highways and canceled flights in parts of Colorado and Wyoming on Friday, snarling traffic and forcing school closures and flight cancellations.

The American Red Cross opened a shelter in Idaho Springs to help stranded travelers. One person died in a two-vehicle accident on slick roads in Weld County, Trooper Gilbert Mares of the Colorado State Patrol said.

Power lines weighed down by snow tripped system circuit breakers and knocked out electricity for more than 16,000 customers in Colorado.

Up to 3 feet of snow was expected by tonight in the mountains above 6,000 feet, forecasters said. Nearly 3 feet already had fallen in Rocky Mountain National Park about 60 miles northwest of Denver.

Monitors leave N. Korea

SEOUL, South Korea — U.S. monitors of North Korea’s nuclear program left the communist nation after the regime ordered them out and vowed to restart its reactor in anger over U.N. criticism of its recent rocket launch.

The four Americans arrived Friday in Beijing on a flight from Pyongyang but declined to speak to reporters. Their departure came a day after U.N. nuclear inspectors left the North. One U.S. official remains in Pyongyang and will leave today, the State Department said.

The pullout of all international inspectors will leave the global community with no on-site means to monitor North Korea’s nuclear facilities, which can yield weapons-grade plutonium if restarted.

Palin: I mulled abortion

EVANSVILLE, Ind. — Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin told an anti-abortion audience in Indiana on Thursday night that “for a fleeting moment” she considered having an abortion after learning that her son Trig would have Down syndrome.

The experience, she added, “now lets me understand a woman’s, a girl’s, temptation to maybe make it all go away.”

Ultimately, Palin said, she decided she had to “walk the walk” concerning her long-standing antiabortion views. She avoided using the word “abortion” in her speech, preferring the phrase “change the circumstances.”

“I had just enough faith to know that my trying to change the circumstances wasn’t any answer,” said Palin, the featured speaker before 3,000 people at a banquet in Evansville.

Combined dispatches