Sleeping in made her a survivor

April 18, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

JIEGU, China

Her roommates used to call her a “lazy pig” for trying to sleep in before class. But it was Song Yuhuan’s slowness to get out of bed that saved her life — the girls who rushed from their dorm were crushed by the walls collapsing in an earthquake that leveled their town and left 1,484 dead.

Song was trapped briefly by Wednesday morning’s quake, a leg and arm pinned under a wall of the third-floor room. Three of her seven roommates died, and a fourth was still missing. Officials say more than 40 of her classmates at the Minorities Vocational School died, and at least 103 students in this remote Tibetan corner of western China were killed.

Moved by the disaster, the exiled Dalai Lama said Saturday he’d like to visit the site, though he has never returned to China since he fled Tibet in 1959 after a failed uprising against Chinese rule.

Massa says he didn’t OK payment

WASHINGTON

Former U.S. Rep. Eric Massa said Saturday that someone forged a $40,000 salary increase for his chief of staff, who has accused the ex-lawmaker of sexual harassment.

The New York Democrat also denied authorizing a check from a campaign account in the same amount to the same official, Joe Racalto, according to a statement released by Massa’s attorney. Racalto’s attorney denied the allegations.

The exchange came one day after Racalto reavealed he had filed a sexual- harassment complaint against Massa, who announced March 5 that he would resign.

US atomic weapons called tool of terror

TEHRAN, Iran

Iran’s supreme leader told a nuclear disarmament conference in Tehran on Saturday that the United States’ atomic weapons are a tool of terror and intimidation.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said America deceptively calls for nonproliferation while holding on to its own weapons and failing to confront Israel, which is widely believed to have nuclear bombs. The two-day conference appeared timed as a counterweight to President Barack Obama’s 47-nation summit in Washington last week to discuss nuclear security.

Germany eyes legal action

BERLIN

The German government may consider taking legal action in a case in which Goldman Sachs & Co. is accused of defrauding investors, a newspaper reported Saturday. The U.S. government alleges Goldman Sachs sold mortgage investments without telling buyers they were crafted with input from a client who was betting on their failing.

Buyers included German bank IKB Deutsche Industriebank AG — an early victim of the financial crisis that was rescued by the state-owned KfW development bank among others.

The Welt am Sonntag newspaper quoted Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman, UIrich Wilhelm, as saying that German regulator BaFin will ask the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for information.

Typo forces reprint

SYDNEY

An Australian publisher is reprinting 7,000 cookbooks over a recipe for pasta with “salt and freshly ground black people.” Penguin Group Australia’s head of publishing, Bob Sessions, acknowledged the proofreader should have caught the “silly mistake.”

The typo was in the “Pasta Bible” recipe for spelt tagliatelle with sardines and prosciutto. The reprinting will cost $18,500.

Associated Press