Governor rejects transit workers' plea

Gov. Bill Owens rejected a request from Denver's mass transit workers to intervene in their two-day-old strike, blaming union officials for the walkout.

The transit union wanted Owens to rescind a ruling by the state Department of Labor that would put the workers back on the job and send both sides into binding arbitration. But Owens said that would take the decisions out of the hands of the transit system's elected board.

Owens blamed the strike on union leaders who unanimously recommended the proposed contract but did not persuade their members to approve it.

Regional Transportation District spokesman Scott Reed reiterated the agency's position that it would not agree to arbitration. Representatives of both sides plan to sit down informally today with a federal mediator in an effort to resolve the stalemate but no formal negotiations have been scheduled.

The RTD operated about 45 percent of its normal bus-service schedule Tuesday, but light-rail operations were shut down. The transit system averages about 275,000 rides per weekday.

Levees fail; farms, trailer park flooded

Two levees broke Tuesday in California's chief agricultural region, flooding a trailer park, threatening other homes in Merced and inundating farmland near Sacramento.

There were no immediate reports of injuries across the Central Valley.

Water breached a 30-foot section of levee along a creek in Merced, sending up to 18 inches of water pouring through a mobile-home park, said Michael Miller, a spokesman for the Department of Water Resources. Three trailer parks were evacuated, a total of 200 people, said Elaine Post, spokeswoman for the Merced County Office of Emergency Services.

South of Sacramento, a Cosumnes River levee gave way, swamping pastures but not threatening any homes. The same area broke in January during heavy storms. The amount of land under water was not immediately known.

Intensive preparations that included massive sandbagging protected all but a few homes threatened by the rising waters of the Red River, which began cresting Tuesday at 19 feet above flood stage.

The river, which runs north along the North Dakota-Minnesota line, was peaking in Fargo at 37 feet, about 2 feet shy of the 1997 flood, the city's worst in a century.

Swollen with melting snow and heavy rain, the river has spread across its broad valley. More than 300,000 sandbags were deployed around homes, businesses and other buildings. Flood damage also was offset by the city's decision to buy up flood-prone land, remove homes and build new levees after the 1997 flood.

Mumps outbreak puzzles Iowa experts

The number of mumps cases in Iowa has jumped to at least 300 in the past week, puzzling health officials who said Tuesday they still do not know the cause of the epidemic, the nation's biggest outbreak of mumps since 1988.

The number of confirmed and suspected cases in Iowa represents a more than 10-fold increase since the last week of February. Fifty-five new cases have been reported in the past week. For epidemiologists, it is a stunning number of cases in a state that, in recent years, has averaged three cases per year. Iowa's outbreak has already exceeded the average annual number of mumps cases nationwide — 265 a year since 2001, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Much of the focus on the potential cause centers on college campuses, where the first of the cases were discovered late last year. Mumps is a virus that is spread most often by coughing and sneezing.

Teacher injured as shell explodes

A teacher who kept a 40 mm shell on his desk as a paperweight blew off part of his hand when he apparently used the object to try to squash a bug, authorities say.

The 5-inch-long shell exploded Monday while Robert Colla was teaching 20 to 25 students at an adult-education class.

Part of Colla's right hand was severed and he suffered severe burns and minor shrapnel wounds to his forearms and torso, fire Capt. Tom Weinell said. He was reported in stable condition at a hospital.

Colla found the 40 mm round while hunting years ago and "obviously he didn't think the round was live," said his colleague, Dennis Huston.

Also

Fire destroyed a church in the eastern Alabama city of Talladega. Authorities had not determined how the fire in the Blackberry Lane Community Church started. State fire marshal's spokesman Ragan Ingram said it was too early to say whether it might be a copycat of a February arson spree that destroyed nine rural churches.

Compiled from The Associated Press and Chicago Tribune