Nation & World Digest || Senators subpoena White House

Senators subpoena White House

WASHINGTON

In a rare public dispute between a Democratic-led Congress and the White House, a Senate committee subpoenaed the Obama administration Monday for secret documents and access to witnesses in last year’s mass shooting at the Fort Hood Army base in Texas.

The chairman and ranking Republican of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee have alleged that the administration is covering up critical details on the case.

Study finds possible addiction to tanning

LOS ANGELES

As many as a third of young people who use indoor tanning facilities may be addicted to the behavior, researchers reported Monday. The findings are the latest to suggest that tanning, whether natural or indoors, activates the same parts of the brain triggered by drug dependence.

The study screened college students using two standard questionnaires designed to assess addiction and modified to assess tanning behavior. Among 229 people who said they had used indoor tanning facilities in the past, 39 percent met one measure’s criteria for addiction; 30 percent met the other measure’s criteria.

3 saved from rubble

JIEGU, China

Relatives kept alive a 4-year-old girl and an elderly woman trapped by an earthquake under a collapsed house for almost a week in China by using bamboo poles to push water and rice through the rubble until rescuers saved them.

The rare good news came as the death toll in China’s remote Tibetan region jumped to 2,039, with about 200 still missing. But relief efforts could be hindered as snow began falling today on the high-altitude region.

Rescuers also freed a third person Monday from the rubble of a hillside house that toppled when the magnitude-6.9 temblor struck Wednesday morning, state broadcaster China Central Television reported.

Man shoots 3, self outside hospital

KNOXVILLE, Tenn.

A gunman opened fire outside a hospital Monday, killing a woman and injuring two others before committing suicide, police said.

Knoxville Police Chief Sterling Owen IV said all the victims were female and current or former employees of Parkwest Medical Center.

Police are still trying to determine a motive.

Cleric links quakes to immodest women

BEIRUT

A senior Iranian cleric says women who wear immodest clothing and behave promiscuously are to blame for earthquakes.

Iran is one of the world’s most earthquake-prone countries, and the cleric’s unusual explanation for why the earth shakes follows a prediction by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that a quake is certain to hit Tehran and that many of its 12 million inhabitants should relocate.

Lawyer: District took 56,000 images

PHILADELPHIA

A suburban school district secretly captured at least 56,000 webcam photographs and screen shots from laptops issued to high school students, its lawyer acknowledged Monday.

None of the images, captured by a tracking program to find missing computers, appeared to be salacious or inappropriate, said lawyer Henry Hockeimer, who represents the Lower Merion School District.

The FBI has opened a criminal investigation into possible wiretap violations by the district, and U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, of Pennsylvania, has introduced a bill to include webcam surveillance under the federal wiretap statute.

Combined dispatches