Man charged with killing 8

Man charged with killing 8

BRUNSWICK, Ga. — A man who told police, “My whole family’s dead!” in a frantic 911 call was charged Friday with killing the eight people attacked in his family’s Georgia mobile home.

Guy Heinze Jr., 22, was arrested Friday on eight counts of first-degree murder in the slayings last weekend near the coastal community of Brunswick. Among those killed were seven of Heinze’s relatives.

The dead included the suspect’s father, Guy Heinze Sr., 45; his uncle, Rusty Toler Sr., 44; and his aunt Brenda Gail Falagan, 49. Also slain were Toler Sr.’s four children — Chrissy Toler, 22; Russell D. Toler Jr., 20; Michael Toler, 19; and Michelle Toler, 15.

Chrissy Toler’s boyfriend, Joseph L. West, 30, was also killed.

Outcry over school speech

WASHINGTON — The White House on Friday dismissed as pointless the furor over President Barack Obama’s plan to deliver a televised back-to-school speech to the nation’s students.

“I think we’ve reached a little bit of the silly season when the president of the United States can’t tell kids in school to study hard and stay in school,” presidential spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters. “I think both political parties agree that the dropout rate is something that threatens our long-term economic success.”

Some conservative critics say Obama is trying to promote a political agenda and overstepping his bounds, taking the federal government too far into public-school business.

Two radio towers toppled

SEATTLE — Two radio-station towers near Seattle that have generated intense local opposition were toppled early Friday in an act of sabotage that bore the initials of the radical Earth Liberation Front.

The towers for KRKO-AM — one of which was 349 feet tall — were torn down because of health and environmental concerns, according to an e-mail from the North American ELF Press Office, which has represented the shadowy group in the past.

The ELF is a loose collection of radical environmentalists that has claimed responsibility for dozens of attacks since the 1990s. A banner that bore the initials of the ELF was left at the scene, authorities said.

Anti-Chavez rallies

BOGOTA, Colombia — Thousands of opponents of Hugo Chavez marched against the Venezuelan president across Latin America on Friday, accusing him of everything from authoritarianism to international meddling.

The protests, coordinated through Twitter and Facebook, drew more than 5,000 people in Bogota, and thousands more in the capitals of Venezuela and Honduras. Smaller demonstrations took place in other Latin American capitals, as well as New York and Madrid.

The Honduras march was led by Roberto Micheletti, who became president when Chavez ally Manuel Zelaya was ousted in a June coup.

Chavez supporters held smaller counter-demonstrations, including a Caracas rally that drew about 100 people. Police in Quito, Ecuador, intervened to keep pro- and anti-Chavez groups from clashing.

Lamp maker sues Disney, Pixar over ‘Luxo Jr.’

“Luxo Jr.,” the squeaky desk-lamp character created by John Lasseter more than two decades ago, is in the spotlight again — this time under the glare of a transatlantic lawsuit.

The hopping swivel lamp has been a corporate mascot for Pixar Animation Studios since its founder created the character in 1986 for a short computer-animated movie that was nominated for an Academy Award. Lasseter was said to have based the character on his own Luxo lamp.

But Norwegian lamp maker Luxo isn’t happy with how Pixar and its parent company, Walt Disney Co., are using its name.

Luxo filed a lawsuit Thursday in New York federal court against Pixar and Disney accusing the companies of infringing on its copyright by selling a limited-edition “Luxo Jr.” lamp packaged with a Blu-ray version of the Disney-Pixar film “Up.” The complaint also cites a new attraction at Walt Disney World that is a 6-foot animatronic version of the lamp.

Combined dispatches