NATION/WORLD DIGEST: Miss California USA fired

Miss California USA fired

LOS ANGELES — Miss California USA Carrie Prejean, who stirred up trouble for herself when she said gays shouldn’t be allowed to marry, got two dreaded words from pageant poobah Donald Trump on Wednesday: “You’re fired.”

Trump and other pageant leaders said Prejean was being sacked not because of the remarks but because she hadn’t been holding up her end of the agreement she signed when she entered the pageant.

Prejean spokeswoman Melany Ethridge declined to comment, saying she hadn’t been able to reach the former beauty queen since the announcement of her ouster.

Nebraska doctor to perform late abortions

OMAHA, Neb. — A Nebraska doctor said Wednesday that he will perform third-term abortions in Kansas after the slaying of abortion provider George Tiller, but would not say whether he will open a new facility or offer the procedure at an existing practice.

Dr. LeRoy Carhart declined to discuss his plans in detail during a telephone interview with The Associated Press, but insisted “there will be a place in Kansas for the later second- and the medically indicated third-trimester patients very soon.”

“I just think that until everything is in place, it’s something that doesn’t need to be talked about” in detail, Carhart said a day after Tiller’s family announced his Wichita clinic was permanently shutting its doors.

Boston Globe to be put up for sale, sources say

BOSTON — The New York Times Co. appears interested in getting rid of The Boston Globe, hiring investment bank Goldman Sachs to manage a potential sale of a newspaper that has plummeted in value since its purchase in 1993, the Globe said Wednesday.

The Globe, citing two potential buyers it did not identify, said Goldman Sachs would request bids for the 137-year-old newspaper in the next couple of weeks. The Times Co. previously announced it had hired the investment bank to sell its 17.5 percent stake in the Boston Red Sox and related sports properties.

Fleeing car hits, kills 3

PHILADELPHIA — Philadelphia’s police commissioner says three children are dead from a crash in which a car jumped a curb. A woman is gravely injured.

Commissioner Charles Ramsey says it happened Wednesday night in the city’s Feltonville neighborhood.

He says it began with two men stealing a motorcycle at gunpoint. One fled on the stolen motorcycle, and one fled in a car. The car jumped the curb and killed the three children and hit a woman, who was the mother of at least one of the children.

Police say the car driver and the motorcycle driver have been arrested. The car driver is injured.

N. Korea sanctions drafted

UNITED NATIONS — Western powers reached agreement with North Korea’s key allies Wednesday on a proposal that would impose tough new sanctions on the reclusive communist nation’s weapons exports and financial dealings, and allow inspections of suspect cargo in ports and on the high seas.

The draft U.N. resolution, which must still be approved by the Security Council, is aimed at preventing North Korea from obtaining and exporting material and know-how to produce nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, and from getting the money to finance the program.

U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice presented the draft resolution to the 15-member council, calling it “a very strong, very credible” response to North Korea’s second nuclear test May 25 in defiance of a Security Council resolution adopted after its first underground atomic blast in October 2006.

Sub seeks black boxes

RECIFE, Brazil — The urgent hunt for the black boxes of Air France Flight 447 received a boost Wednesday — a French nuclear submarine scoured the search area, listening for the data and voice recorders’ pings before they fade away.

Brazilian searchers in charge of recovering floating bodies and debris said the surface search area widened into Senegalese waters. Ocean currents have pushed the remnants far and wide since the jet went down May 31 with 228 people on board.

The black boxes provide the best hope of unraveling why the Airbus A330-200 aircraft apparently broke up in midair and plunged into the sea.

Associated Press