'Whole face of the mountain' fell into valley, resident says

CNN) -- The sights and sounds of rocks rolling down mountainsides are common but still captivating phenomena for the residents of the Nile Valley in central Washington state.

The landslide covered up to a half-mile of Washington state Route 410 with rock up to 30 feet deep.

more photos »

"Every morning I hear big rocks coming down," said longtime valley resident Frank Koch.

But a landslide over the weekend was more than Koch and the other 1,500 people in the Nile Valley bargained for.

"We just had the whole face of the mountain just pretty much come off," said Valerie Royster, manager of the Woodshed Restaurant, which sits just across the road from the edge of the landslide.

The slide covered a quarter-mile to half-mile of State Route 410, which connects Yakima with Mount Rainier National Park, with rock up to 30 feet deep, said Washington state Department of Transportation spokesman Mike Westbay.

Westbay said 25 homes had been affected by flooding and five by the landslide itself, including a mobile home that was demolished. See how slide blocked roads, moved homes »

Damage was estimated at $20 million, but that would likely increase, said Jim Hall, director of emergency management for Yakima County.

"My bet is it's probably going to be a lot more than that,' Hall said. Roads would needed to be rebuilt or rerouted, he said, and tons and tons of rock and debris moved. iReport.com: Are you there? Share your photos, videos

The mountain's movement attracted dozens of residents to the parking lot of the Woodshed, which Royster calls the hub of the community, on Sunday morning to take in the spectacle.

"It was a slow slide," she told CNN by telephone Monday morning, which meant residents had enough warning to get out of their homes and to the Woodshed's parking lot to watch nature's majesty and fury.

"It was very loud. You could watch trees coming down" as the slide pushed the rocks in the valley's riverbed 30 to 40 feet up the opposite bank, Royster said. Afterward, residents found river fish high and dry on the hillside, she said.

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Westbay said the slide was like nothing the state has seen before, in that it wasn't the result of a weather or seismic event.

"We've had rockslides, mudslides, avalanches, but nothing like this," he said. Geologists were calling it a "natural land movement," he said.

Westbay said the rocks had stabilized by Tuesday morning, and crews had begun work on a temporary gravel road to restore access to residents.

Flooding was the biggest obstacle to that; the slide changed the course of the Naches River, he said.

For all the spectacle of the weekend, local resident Koch was impressed by something else Tuesday morning -- the government response.

"They're out there kicking bootie today," he said of the repair crews. "It's pretty amazing to see government moving that fast."

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/US/10/13/washington.landslide/index.html

Boy punished for cutlery breach

A six-year-old American boy has been ordered to spend 45 days at a school for troublemakers after he brought his favourite camping cutlery to school.

Zachary Christie took out the combination knife, fork and spoon at lunch, in violation of the school policy of not bringing in knives.

Zachary agreed that knives should not be in school but said the punishment was "not fair", he told CBS News.

Hundreds of people are expected at a school board meeting about the issue.

Downes Elementary School, in Newark, Delaware, operates a zero tolerance policy on knives, banning them as dangerous instruments.

Officials said they were forced to act regardless of Zachary's age or what he planned to do with the knife, the Associated Press reported.

School board member John Mackenzie said the board could change its policy.

"The policy, of course, needs some additional flexibility," he told AP.

"Politically, zero tolerance is what everybody clamours for, until we start to realise how harsh zero tolerance can be."

Suspension appeal

In other cases school officials have ignored the policy and Mr Mackenzie said he was surprised this had not happened in Zachary's case.

Zachary and his mother supported the policy but were unhappy with its implementation.

He said: "I agree that they shouldn't bring dangerous weapons to school but I don't think the punishment should be this bad.

"It's not fair."

His mother, Debbie Christie, is home-schooling him and is to appeal her son's suspension.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8305987.stm

Teacher could face death for killing lover's pregnant fiancé

CANTON, Mississippi (In Session/CNN) -- A Mississippi middle school teacher could face the death penalty after she was found guilty Tuesday of fatally shooting and stabbing her lover's pregnant fiancé in 2006.

Carla Hughes taught at the same middle school as the victim's husband, Keyon Pittman.

Carla Hughes, 28, sobbed loudly as a judge read the verdicts on two counts of capital murder for the deaths of Avis Banks and her unborn child. The jury also found the slayings occurred during the commission of a burglary, making Hughes eligible for the death penalty.

A jury of nine women and three men are due to return to Madison County Circuit Court Wednesday morning to decide if Hughes will be executed for killing Banks, who was five months pregnant. Their verdict must be unanimous or Hughes will receive a life sentence.

Mississippi is among the states that consider murdering a pregnant woman to be taking two lives.

Madison County district attorneys alleged Hughes killed Banks so she could be with Keyon Pittman, her lover and colleague at Chastain Middle School in Jackson, Mississippi.

Banks, 27, was found lying in a pool of blood on November 29, 2006, in the garage of the Ridgeland home she shared with Pittman, the father of her unborn child.

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She had been shot four times in the leg, chest and head, and then stabbed multiple times in the face and neck as she lay dying, according to medical testimony.

Suspicion initially fell on Pittman, who admitted to having an affair with Hughes, a language arts teacher. Pittman, a key prosecution witness, told the jury he began seeing Hughes one month after finding out his girlfriend was pregnant. He testified that the two met frequently in Hughes' home and even went out of town together, but he insisted the relationship was based solely on sex.

Throughout the trial, defense lawyers maintained her innocence and attempted to cast blame on Pittman, portraying him as a womanizer seeking to avoid the burden of fatherhood.

But prosecutors said they could not link the crime to Pittman, who testified that he invoked his right against self-incrimination during a preliminary hearing when asked where he was the afternoon his fiancée was killed.

Instead, prosecutors alleged that the murder weapons connected Hughes to the crime. The defendant's cousin testified that he lent her a knife and a loaded .38 caliber revolver the weekend before Hughes' death. Ballistics tests matched the bullets from Hughes' body to the gun, which Hughes returned unloaded to her cousin after her first interview with police.

Madison County District Attorney Michael Guest said Banks' relatives plan to deliver victim impact statements at the sentencing. He said medical testimony will be presented to support the prosecution's claim that the murders were gruesome and heinous, and warrant the death penalty.

Hughes' lawyer, Johnnie E. Walls, Jr., a Mississippi state senator, said her relatives will testify in a bid to spare her life

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/10/13/mississippi.teacher.slayings/index.html

Senate panel passes health bill

A Senate committee has approved a bill to reform US healthcare, a key step in President Barack Obama's attempt to overhaul the system.

Senators voted by 14 votes to nine to pass the bill, with one Republican joining Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee in voting in favour.

Senator Olympia Snowe became the first Republican to back the proposals.

The reforms, intended to cut costs and make insurance more affordable, are Mr Obama's top domestic priority.

The president welcomed the committee's decision, calling it a "critical milestone".

"We are closer than ever before to passing healthcare reform but we are not there yet," he said. "Now is not the time to pat ourselves on the back... It is time to dig in further and get this done."

'Miles to go'

Obama welcomed the progress made so far on the bill

Announcing her decision to break with her party on Tuesday, Senator Snowe said: "When history calls, history calls."

However, the moderate Republican said it did not necessarily mean she would support later versions of a bill.

"There are many, many miles to go in this legislative journey," she said. "My vote today is my vote today. It doesn't forecast what it will be tomorrow."

The panel's bill, which was drafted after weeks of at times bitterly bipartisan debate, sets out a 10-year $829bn (£525bn) plan to cut health costs and provide affordable health insurance to most Americans.

US HEALTHCARE No universal coverage Private health insurance available through employer, government or private schemes US spends some 16.2% of GDP on healthcare, nearly twice average of other OECD countries US Census Bureau estimates some 46m people do not have health insurance - includes 9.2 million non-citizens and 18 million people who earn over $50,000 a year Medicaid: federal-state programme for low income groups Medicare: for people 65 years old and above and some younger disabled people Q&A: Healthcare reform Healthcare around world

Senator Charles Grassley, the senior Republican on the panel, criticised the legislation and predicted that the bill would move "leftward" as it progressed through Congress.

"This bill is already moving on a slippery slope to more government control of healthcare," he said.

The finance committee's bill must now be combined with a bill drafted by the Senate Health Committee before going to the full Senate for a vote.

It is not guaranteed to pass, as it needs all the Democrats, two independents and one Republican to vote in favour.

'Public option'

Mr Obama argues that all Americans are entitled to insurance coverage, that rising costs must be tackled and that private insurers must not be able to deny coverage or end it when someone becomes seriously ill.

ANALYSIS Paul Adams, BBC News, Washington On the long, tortuous road towards reform of America's healthcare system, this was a decisive moment. Several members of the Senate Finance Committee called the vote historic. The Washington Post this morning reported that not since Theodore Roosevelt proposed universal healthcare in 1912 has any such bill come this far. After months of debate, the committee's chairman, Max Baucus, looked delighted and relieved. In the end, those in favour of the bill won comfortably. This was due in part to a Democratic majority, but also to the support of Senator Olympia Snowe, who became the first Republican to back any of the bills proposed this year. But this is not the end of the process. There are many more legislative hurdles to overcome before it becomes law. In the meantime, debate will continue to rage.

A long congressional slog still lies ahead, correspondents say, but Mr Obama's push for healthcare reform has gone further than attempts in the 1990s by President Bill Clinton, which never got beyond all the committees.

All the different versions of the bill produced by House of Representatives and Senate committees are broadly similar in the scope of their reforms:

• toughen regulations on health insurers
• mandate all Americans to get insurance
• offer subsidies to the less well-off and set up health insurance exchanges for people without employer-sponsored coverage, to help them choose between different options.

Lawmakers are divided, however, over whether there should be a new government-run insurance scheme - the so-called "public option".

The finance committee's bill is the only one not to include a public option, an element advocated by Mr Obama and some Democrats as the means of creating competition between insurers.

Last week, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office concluded that the finance committee's bill would result in reducing the federal deficit by $81bn and mean some 94% of eligible Americans would have insurance coverage.

However, Republicans say the final draft which will be voted on is likely to be very different and more expensive than this version. They say the proposed reforms are too costly and represent too much government intrusion into healthcare.

At the weekend, the private insurance industry issued a study that said the plans could mean policies end up costing people hundreds, if not thousands, more dollars.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8304375.stm

Love me (legal) tender: Elvis ranch on market for $6.5 million

(CNN) -- It's arguably one of the largest pieces of Elvis Presley memorabilia ever: a 154.5-acre ranch in Horn Lake, Mississippi, once owned by the king of rock 'n' roll.

Elvis Presley bought the property in February 1967, three months before marrying Priscilla Beaulieu.

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And it's on the market, with an asking price of $6.5 million.

"It had a large cross there that Elvis really liked, and a concrete bridge over a 14-acre lake," real estate agent Rodger Motz told CNN.

The property, called the "Elvis Ranch" by locals, is just east of Highway 301 in Horn Lake, about 17 miles south of Memphis, Tennessee.

Presley purchased it in February 1967, three months before he married Priscilla Beaulieu, according to a Graceland spokeswoman. The deed on record was signed by Presley's longtime manager, Col. Tom Parker, said Parker Pickle, Desoto County tax assessor.

There is a small house known as the "Honeymoon Cottage" on the property. Graceland confirmed the newly married Presleys did spend time there following their honeymoon in Palm Springs, California.

The property has been on the market since last month. Its current owners are Dennis McLemore and his brothers.

McLemore said his parents bought the property in 1979 and turned it into a cattle ranch after previous owner-developers had failed to turn it into a resort.

McLemore said he met Priscilla Presley on a winter day in 1985. "I got a call one day that Priscilla was coming up for a visit," he said. "I'd been working on a cow's ear and was covered in blood when she came up. She told me Elvis would have been proud this was a working cattle ranch."

Tours occasionally have driven down from Memphis with passengers who took pictures of the pastures, he said.

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At one time, there was a 12-foot wooden fence around the compound with a half-dozen trailers on the grounds, where members of Presley's entourage, the "Memphis Mafia" were housed. "There's still a trailer pad behind the Honeymoon Cottage," McLemore said.

"I remember as a child when Elvis owned it," said Anita Rainey, planning director for the city of Horn Lake. "I had a friend he gave a horse to. She lived across the street to the ranch and woke up one day and they had a pony."

She said she remembers seeing Presley riding a horse along the highway. He was a quiet owner, she said, and the ranch is prime real estate.

"I've been getting a lot of calls from media," Motz said, "and the Europeans are really interested."

However, he said, he doesn't have a serious buyer on the hook and has yet to receive an offer.

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/10/12/elvis.ranch.for.sale/index.html

'New' Jackson song more like '90s retread

(CNN) -- The Michael Jackson song "This Is It," released Monday, was co-written and recorded in 1983 with singer-songwriter Paul Anka, Anka and the Jackson estate confirmed Monday afternoon.

Interest has been running high in "This Is It" -- the song, the two-disc album and the movie.

Jackson's estate and Sony Music Entertainment did not realize this history when they picked the song out of boxes of tapes in their archives, leading to a big surprise Monday when Anka called them, Anka said.

Jackson, who became busy with the success of his "Thriller" album, never finished the duet recording that was intended for Anka's "Walk a Fine Line" album, Anka said.

Latin hip-hop singer Safire recorded and released the song in 1990 -- under the title "I Never Heard," Anka said.

"Somebody just innocently found this tape and did not know somebody recorded it with him," Anka said.

Estate spokesman James Bates acknowledged to CNN that the "song was written with the legendary Paul Anka."

"We picked the song because the lyrics were appropriate given the name Michael gave his tour," Bates said.

It was just a coincidence that the song's first words were the same as Jackson's last planned tour, Anka said.

Monday's release of the lilting love song was part of the promotion for the Sony movie "Michael Jackson's This Is It," which comes out in two weeks.

Anka said it was "an honest mistake" that the estate's special administrators quickly resolved Monday.

"They realized the mistake," Anka said "They apologized and they've given me rightfully what I own. It's 50-50, right down the middle."

Rob Stringer, chairman of Sony's Columbia/Epic Label Group, was quoted in The New York Times on Sunday as saying he did not know the origins of the song.

Anka, who is heard playing piano on the song, said producers did a beautiful job of completing it.

Backing vocals from Jackson's brothers and orchestration were added to the spare voice and piano track recorded 26 years ago in Anka's studio.

The original version, with just Jackson and Anka, will be included in the two-disc soundtrack, along with the orchestral version, Sony said.

The orchestral version will play at the close of the film, which will feature Jackson's career highlights and last rehearsals, Sony said.

The CD will be released on October 27, coincidental with the debut of the movie, Sony said.

"Disc one features the original album masters of some of Michael's biggest hits such as 'Billie Jean,' 'Smooth Criminal,' 'Human Nature,' and 'Thriller' arranged in the same sequence as they appear in the film," Sony said.

The second disc includes "early demo versions" of Jackson classics "She's Out Of My Life," "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'" and "Beat It," Sony said.

"This disc also features a recently discovered spoken word poem from Michael Jackson entitled 'Planet Earth," the company said.

The just-released song got widespread airplay on radio shows across the United States Monday, according to Nielsen BDS, a company that tracks music airplay. It the 21st most-played song on the 1,300 stations monitored by Nielsen, with at least 680 "spins" by mid-afternoon, the company said.


http://edition.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/Music/10/12/michael.jackson.song/index.html

Schwarzenegger signs bill honoring gay-rights activist

(CNN) -- California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed a bill commemorating Harvey Milk, the first openly gay politician elected to public office in the state, a spokesman for the governor said Monday.

Stuart Milk, nephew of Harvey Milk, sits next to a photo of the gay rights activist in March.

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"He really saw this signing as a way to honor the gay community in California," spokesman Aaron McLear told CNN in a telephone interview.

Schwarzenegger vetoed a similar bill last year, saying he believed Milk should be recognized at the local level.

But since then, "Milk has become much more of a symbol of the gay community," McLear said, citing the eponymous movie starring Sean Penn, Milk's posthumous receipt of the Presidential Medal of Freedom and his induction into the California Hall of Fame.

Milk served briefly as San Francisco's supervisor before he and Mayor George Moscone were assassinated in 1978 by Dan White, a city supervisor who had recently resigned but wanted his job back.

Under the measure, the governor each year would proclaim May 22 -- Milk's birthday -- as a day of significance across the state.

The bill was one of 704 signed Sunday -- most of them near the midnight deadline -- by Schwarzenegger, said spokesman Aaron McLear.

The legislation passed the state Senate in May and the state Assembly last month.

The legislation has been divisive, with the governor's office receiving more than 100,000 phone calls and e-mails, most of them in opposition, spokeswoman Andrea McCarthy said last month.

But she added that most of the Twitter posts the governor received were in favor of the bill.

Schwarzenegger vetoed a similar bill last year, saying he believed Milk should be recognized at the local level.

Milk was a "unique" historical figure who led a civil rights movement and then was "assassinated in his public office for being who he was," State Sen. Mark Leno, a Democrat, told CNN last month.

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The day of significance would not close schools or state offices, according to its text.

However, Randy Thomasson, the president of SaveCalifornia.com, said the bill was vague and could allow for a number of things at schools, including gay pride parades or "mock gay weddings."

"Harvey Milk was a terrible role model for children," said Thomasson, whose organization opposed the bill.

"The reality is Harvey Milk is a hero to so many people and a great role model," said Geoff Kors, executive director of Equality California, the group that backed the bill introduced by Leno.

"It's very appropriate that the state he worked in and passed the first gay rights bill in the country should honor him."

He said the bill marks the first time any state has officially honored an openly gay person.

Leno said that claims that the bill would lead to schools holding gay-pride parades and similar activities were "hyperbole." The bill "mandates nothing," he said, although it "affords an educational opportunity."

President Obama posthumously honored Milk with a Presidential Medal of Freedom this year, and Sean Penn portrayed him in the 2008 film "Milk," for which he received an Oscar for best actor.

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/10/12/harvey.milk/index.html