Lung cancer kills Indiana lawmaker

Indianapolis

U.S. Rep. Julia Carson, D-Ind., who rose from a childhood of poverty and segregation to become the first African American and first woman to represent Indianapolis in Congress, died Saturday. She was 69.

Rep. Carson died of lung cancer at her home, where she had spent the past several weeks, a family spokeswoman said.

Rep. Carson, first elected to Congress in 1996, had persevered through major heart surgery and years of health problems before revealing her lung cancer last month, saying she would not seek election in 2008 to a seventh term. She had been away from Washington since late September.

She championed children's issues, women's rights and efforts to reduce homelessness, and was a staunch opponent of the war in Iraq.

Gov. Mitch Daniels will call a special election to choose a replacement to serve the last year of Carson's term.

Gloucester, Mass.

1 dies as blaze burns building, synagogue

A blaze in Gloucester, Mass., destroyed an apartment building and a synagogue, killing at least one person, authorities told The Boston Globe.

The eight-alarm fire started late Friday in the four-story apartment building and spread to Temple Ahavat Achim. Both buildings were reduced to embers.

The buildings are just 50 feet from the fire department's headquarters. One person was killed, Fire Chief Barry McKay told The Globe, but he did not identify the victim.

The cause of the fire hadn't been determined, he said.

Washington

Tapes' destruction defended to judge

The Bush administration told a federal judge its 2005 destruction of CIA interrogation videotapes did not violate a court order because the captives in question were being kept in secret prisons at the time, not at the military detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

In court papers, the government also urged U.S. District Judge Henry Kennedy Jr. not to seek further information about the tapes to avoid interfering with a preliminary inquiry by the Justice Department and the CIA's inspector general.

The motion, filed late Friday, is the first court statement by the Bush administration since the CIA disclosed that videotapes of coercive interrogation techniques used on two "high-value detainees" were destroyed in November 2005.

Kennedy issued an order in June 2005 requiring the preservation of evidence "regarding the torture, mistreatment, and abuse of detainees now at the United States Naval Base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba."

Washington

Jews, Muslims set up an interfaith effort

Two major Jewish and Muslim organizations unveiled an interfaith-dialogue curriculum Saturday and are urging their hundreds of thousands of members to use it.

Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, announced the partnership with the Islamic Society of North America at his group's biennial convention in San Diego.

The curriculum is built around five sessions that touch on topics including the place of Jerusalem in Jewish and Muslim tradition.

Seattle Times news services