World
Syrian city at heart of uprising under siege as army cracks down
BEIRUT (AP) — The city at the heart of Syria’s monthlong uprising ran low on food, water and medicine Wednesday as the army sent in more tanks and reinforcements as part of a widening crackdown against opponents of President Bashar Assad’s authoritarian regime, witnesses said.
 
Two residents in Daraa said at least five army officers had sided with demonstrators, and conscripted soldiers sent into the city were quietly refusing orders to detain people at checkpoints.
 
Interior minister says Mubarak too frail to be moved from hospital
 
CAIRO (AP) — Egypt’s top security official recommended that ousted President Hosni Mubarak not be moved from the hospital where he is being kept under arrest at the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, according to a statement by the prosecutor general’s office.
 
Interior Minister Mansour el-Issawi wrote to the prosecutor general, who had ordered the deposed president’s transfer to a military hospital near Cairo, that Mubarak’s health was too poor, said the statement issued late Tuesday.
Italian researchers start looking for bones of likely ‘Mona Lisa’ model
 
FLORENCE, Italy (AP) — Italian researchers have begun looking for the remains of a Renaissance woman many believed posed for the “Mona Lisa.”
 
The researchers used a geo-radar device Wednesday to search for underground tombs in a Florence convent where Lisa Gherardini is believed to be buried.
 
Gherardini, the wife of a rich silk merchant named Francesco del Giocondo, has been linked to Leonardo da Vinci’s painting, which is known in Italian as “La Gioconda.”
Nation
 
At least 15 dead as storms pound South for second day in a row
JEFF BUSBY PARK, Miss. (AP) — A wave of thunderstorms with winds near hurricane force strafed the South on Wednesday, killing at least 15 people from Arkansas to Alabama, including a father struck by a tree while protecting his daughter at a Mississippi campsite.
 
The system laced with tornadoes spread destruction Tuesday night and Wednesday from Texas to Georgia. An earlier series of storms this week killed 11 people in Arkansas and Mississippi.
 
Hawaiian government hands over President Obama’s birth records 
HONOLULU (AP) — Government officials made a special exception to state policy when they gave President Barack Obama copies of the original documents recording his 1961 birth in Honolulu. It’s a waiver they say they won’t grant again.
 
The move comes after officials said the state wouldn’t release those records under any circumstances. Then they got a letter from Obama and his personal attorney.
 
They asked for a waiver to get the copies and relieve the state from having to further answer questions on the matter.