Ousted worker says no to USDA job

Ousted worker says no to USDA job

WASHINGTON

Shirley Sherrod, ousted from the Agriculture Department during a racial firestorm that embarrassed the Obama administration, rejected an offer to return to the USDA on Tuesday. But at a cordial news conference with the man who asked her to leave — Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack — she said she may do consulting work for him on racial issues.

She was asked to leave her job as Georgia’s director of rural development in July after comments she made in March were misconstrued as racist. She has since received numerous apologies from the administration, including from President Barack Obama himself, and Vilsack asked her to return. But she said at the news conference with a clearly disappointed Vilsack that she did not think she could say yes to a job “at this point, with all that has happened.”

Militants kill 32

MOGADISHU, Somalia

Islamist militants wearing Somali military uniforms stormed a hotel favored by lawmakers in the war-battered capital Tuesday, firing indiscriminately and killing 32 people, including six parliamentarians.

A suicide bomber and one of the gunmen also were killed in the brazen attack just a half-mile from the presidential palace. The attack showed the insurgent group al-Shabab, which controls wide areas of Somalia, can penetrate even the few blocks of the capital under the control of the government and African Union troops.

States to Craigslist: End adult section

HARTFORD, Conn.

Craigslist should remove its adult-services section because the website cannot adequately block potentially illegal ads promoting prostitution and child trafficking, attorneys general in 17 states demanded Tuesday in a joint letter.

The joint letter acknowledged Craigslist faces the prospect of losing revenue if it were to remove the adult-services section.

The 17 states whose attorneys general signed the letter are: Arkansas, Connecticut, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, Ohio, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia.

William Saxbe, Nixon AG, dies

COLUMBUS

William Saxbe, a Republican maverick who became the fourth attorney general to serve under President Richard M. Nixon and presided during the Watergate investigation, died Tuesday. He was 94.

Saxbe, who served in the Ohio Legislature and as state attorney general, died at his home in Mechanicsburg, northwest of Columbus, said his son, Charles “Rocky” Saxbe.

Jet misses runway in China; 43 die

BEIJING

A Chinese passenger jet broke apart as it approached a fog-shrouded runway in the country’s northeast and burst into flames as it hit the ground Tuesday, killing 43 people and injuring 53 others, state media said.

The Henan Airlines plane with 91 passengers and five crew crashed in a grassy area near the Lindu airport on the outskirts of Yichun, a city of about 1 million people in Heilongjiang province, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

Associated Press