The World - Sept. 10, 2009

THURSDAY

A huge wildfire burning in the mountains above Los Angeles, now the largest ever in the county, was started by arson and will be investigated as a homicide. The Station Fire has killed two firefighters, destroyed 64 homes and torched an area the size of Chicago across the rugged San Gabriel Mountains.

Susan Atkins, a follower of Charles Manson convicted nearly four decades ago for seven grizzly murders, including the 1971 murder of pregnant actress Sharon Tate, lost her 13th bid for release. Atkins, 61, is serving a life sentence and is terminally ill with brain cancer.

A bank in Florida refused to cash a check for an armless man because he could not provide a thumbprint.

Miyki Hatoyama, the wife of Japan’s premier-in-waiting Yukio Hatoyama, claims to have traveled aboard a triangular-shaped UFO and gone to Venus some 20 years ago.

FRIDAY

The chair of Citizens for Disincorporation (of Spokane Valley) announced the group is dropping its bid to ask for disincorporation on the November ballot. The group has 17,000 of the 24,000 valid signatures needed to force a vote.

A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit of Appeals ruled former Attorney General John Ashcroft can be sued by people who claim they were wrongfully detained as material witnesses. The case was brought forth by a former University of Idaho student who claimed Ashcroft purposely used the material witness statute to detain suspects who he wished to investigate and detain preventively.

Grandmaster Vladislav Tkachiev arrived for a chess match against India’s Praveen Kumar in such drunken shape that he dozed off 11 moves into the international tournament.

WEEKEND

Israel announced it will approve construction of 500 new settler homes in the occupied West Bank.

Teen Michael Milller of Milton-Freewater found “anicia checkerspot,” a previously unseen butterfly, on Mt. Rainier while hiking on an Oregon Museum of Science and Industry camp studying the effect of global warming on butterflies.

US fast food giant McDonald’s, which has waged an eight-year legal battle with Malaysian restaurant McCurry, petitioned the country’s highest court to strip the eatery of the “Mc” prefix.

Scientists have found three new major genetic links to Alzheimer’s, affecting up to 20 percent of people with the brain-wasting disease. The three new genes join the better-known APOE4 gene as significant risk factors for the most common cause of dementia.

MONDAY

American teenager Melanie Oudin advanced to the quarterfinals in the U.S. Open when she rolled over Nadia Petrova. Petrova was the fourth Russian the 17-year old Oudin had toppled in the tournament.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon removed Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora to try to revamp a war against drug cartels that have resisted an army campaign to defeat them. Mora spearheaded the fight against drug trafficking. Cartels have been killing about 20 people a day in Mexico, and traffickers have infiltrated many police forces.

A British scientific expedition in Papua New Guinea discovered a new species of giant rat. The Bosavi woolly rat is the size of a small domestic cat, weighing about 3.3 pounds and measuring 2.7 feet in length from its nose to its tail.

Farmers in developing countries are losing traditional plant varieties because of growing corporate control of the seeds they plant, hampering their ability to cope with climate change, according to the International Institute for Environment and Development, a London-based think tank.

TUESDAY

Barack Obama will become the first American president to chair the United Nation’s 15-member Security Council during the general assembly. The topic for the summit-level session of the council on September 24 is nuclear non-proliferation and nuclear disarmament.

Striking Kent teachers decided to defy a judge who last week ordered them to return to work on Tuesday. A vote showed 74 percent of the teachers favored continuing the strike.

Tropical Storm Fred strengthened into a hurricane over the eastern Atlantic, but was forecast to steer clear of any land, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.

WEDNESDAY

U.N. officials ordered a partial recount of Afghanistan’s presidential election after finding entire boxes of ballots marked for incumbent Hamid Karzai.

Deputies in Contra Costa County, Calif., said the found a bone fragment from a human in the backyard of kidnapping suspects Philip and Nancy Garrido.

Four U.S. soldiers died in bomb blasts in Northern Iraq and Baghdad.

Firefighters have controlled a 200-acre lightning-caused fire in Yellowstone National Park.