Nation Digest
Indians protest in Denver over Columbus parade

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Police said they began making arrests after ordering about 600 protesters to leave when the parade was about a block away. The 230 protesters who were arrested were charged with loitering and disobedience to a lawful order.

There were no reports of violence or injuries.

Police said the protesters, many of whom were American Indians, gathered at the state Capitol, then marched to the parade route in downtown Denver.

Most carried signs, including one that read "Not Genocide, Celebrate Pride" and another showing a crossed-out picture of Columbus with the word "savage" over it.

Adam Becenti, a student of Navajo descent at the University of Colorado, Boulder, said the protest was meant to educate people about the inaccuracies in history books.

"We're grown up to believe he was the first person here," which denies the American Indians' place in history and ignores their genocide, he said.

Former Nazi guard faces deportation

SHARON, Pa. — A man facing deportation because he served as a guard at two Nazi concentration camps said he was forced to join the unit that guarded the camps or face death.

The Justice Department wants to revoke the citizenship of Anton Geiser, 79, a retired Pennsylvania steelworker who was born in Croatia. The department said Geiser hid his service in the Waffen SS from U.S. officials when he immigrated in 1956.

The department said Geiser was an armed guard at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin from January to November 1943 before being transferred to the concentration camp at Buchenwald. Tens of thousands of people were executed or died from starvation, disease and medical experiments at the camps.
 
But Geiser, who does not deny he was a guard at the camps, said the U.S. visa application did not ask him to reveal his service and that the law did not require him to volunteer information.

Deliberately set fire in row house kills 6

PHILADELPHIA — A fast-moving, predawn arson fire in a row house yesterday killed six people, including four children.

Authorities concluded the fire was set deliberately, after police dogs smelled an accelerant. The deaths have been ruled homicides.

The house in the north Philadelphia neighborhood was engulfed in flames when firefighters arrived. Five victims died at the scene. The sixth, a 2-year-old boy, died at Temple University Hospital, officials said.

"The heat was very intense, even for the firefighters trying to make their attempts at rescues," police Capt. Richard Ross said. "Obviously, these people didn't stand a chance."

Man gets severe burns from hot geyser water

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK — A tourist who wandered off a trail broke through fragile ground near a geyser, scalding his legs up to his knees. He received second-degree burns.

The man and a friend were hiking Thursday when they decided to leave the boardwalk in the park's Firehole Lake area of Lower Geyser Basin, rangers said. The man stepped through the thin layer of earth in thermal areas that covers water near or above the boiling point.

He was pulled from the water by the friend, who drove him to Old Faithful Inn at the park. There, emergency workers stabilized the man and transported him to Old Faithful Clinic. He was flown later to an Idaho hospital.

Southeast Louisiana drenched by storm

NEW ORLEANS — Tropical Storm Matthew, the 13th named storm of the 2004 hurricane season, flooded roads and homes across southeastern Louisiana yesterday as it blew toward the Gulf of Mexico with high tides and torrential rainfall.

The town of Houma received 7.2 inches of rain in 24 hours, said Frank Revitte, a forecaster with the National Weather Service in Slidell. Farther inland, 4.17 inches of rain fell overnight at New Orleans and 5.29 inches fell at Baton Rouge.

The storm later weakened and was downgraded to a tropical depression.

Also

Hollywood's most famous film flop, the legendary box-office disaster "Heaven's Gate," has been resurrected as an art film with an engagement that began Friday at New York's Film Forum. The glacially paced western starring Kris Kristofferson, Christopher Walken, John Hurt and Isabelle Huppert was panned by critics and ridiculed for costing nearly five times its budget of $7.5 million.