New immigration program begins

New immigration program begins

WASHINGTON

The Obama administration on Tuesday directed young illegal immigrants to fill out new forms and pay $465 if they want to apply under a new program that would let them avoid deportation and obtain a U.S. work permit.

The government renewed warnings that the process wouldn’t lead to citizenship or give them permission to travel internationally. It will begin accepting immigrants’ applications today.

The paperwork for the program, known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, can be downloaded from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services website, said the agency’s director, Alejandro Mayorkas. Applicants must pay a $465 fee and provide proof of identity and eligibility.

New storm hits Philippines; 2 die

MANILA, Philippines

A second tropical storm in two weeks battered the northern Philippines after making landfall today, killing at least two people, as forecasters warned that the still-reeling capital could see more flooding.

Meanwhile, President Benigno Aquino III scrambled to avert another crisis when hundreds of state weather-agency employees protested over their pay and warned that forecasting services could deteriorate.

Top Scrabble player caught cheating

ORLANDO, Fla.

One of the top young Scrabble players in the country has been kicked out of the game’s national championship tournament in Florida after he was caught hiding blank letter tiles, organizers said Tuesday.

John D. Williams, Jr., executive director of the National Scrabble Association, said that a male player was ejected from the 350-player event in Round 24 of the 28-round event.

The cheating was spotted by a player at a nearby table, who noticed the ejected player conceal a pair of blank tiles by dropping them on the floor, organizers said. Blank tiles can be used as wild-card letters. When confronted by the tournament director, he admitted it, organizers said.

Williams would not identify the player by name or age because he’s a minor.

Mayor raids stores to feed the poor

MADRID

The mayor of a village in southern Spain has been nicknamed the “Spanish Robin Hood” for organizing raids on supermarkets to feed the poor.

The raids by Juan Manuel Sanchez Gordillo, the 60-year-old far-left mayor of Marinaleda in Andalusia, and other activists were aimed at drawing media attention to the plight of millions of people struggling to make ends meet as Spain’s economic crisis deepens.

Sanchez Gordillo rejects criticism of the two raids, in which shopping carts filled with food were taken away from supermarkets without paying.

“It is much more alarming that 34 percent of the Andalusian work force are without jobs,” the gray-bearded mayor, who wears a Palestinian neck scarf and has a picture of Argentine revolutionary Che Guevara in his office, told the daily El Pais.

Study: Blood type tied to disease risk

LOS ANGELES

Potentially good news for the 45 percent of Americans who have Type O blood: Researchers said Tuesday that those people appear to have a slightly lower risk of developing heart disease than their neighbors with Type A, B or AB blood.

Dr. Lu Qi, an assistant professor of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, analyzed heart-disease risk in two large, multi-decade health studies.

Combined dispatches