INTERNATIONAL
UN Security Council adds 2,000 troops to Ivory Coast force
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The U.N. Security Council on Wednesday voted unanimously to deploy 2,000 additional peacekeepers to Ivory Coast, where the incumbent president has refused to relinquish his post to the man internationally recognized as the West African country’s legitimate leader.
Ivory Coast has seen violence and increased tension since the disputed presidential election in November. The new U.N. troops, to be deployed through June, would bolster the world body’s peacekeeping force to nearly 12,000.
Moroccan teen says Prime Minister Berlusconi never touched her
MILAN (AP) — Silvio Berlusconi and the Moroccan teenager at the center of an underage prostitution probe targeting the Italian premier both denied any sexual contact in separate comments Wednesday.
Berlusconi taped a video message — the second time in a few days — to defend himself from the probe by Milan prosecutors into his encounters with the teenager, nicknamed Ruby Rubacuori (Ruby the Heart-Stealer).
Police: 21 seized at Moscow memorial rally for slain lawyer
MOSCOW (AP)—Russian police arrested 21 people Wednesday at a Moscow memorial rally for a human rights lawyer who was shot in a brazen, broad-daylight killing near the Kremlin two years ago.
Hundreds of people attended the rally in memory of rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov and reporter Anastasiya Baburova, whose slayings caused outrage in Russian liberal circles and in the West.
During the after-dark vigil, people at the rally released lanterns, held candles and clutched portraits of the slain.
NATIONAL
House votes to repeal President Obama’s year-old health care law
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Republican-controlled House has voted to repeal the health-care law President Barack Obama signed last year.
The 245-189 vote marks the fulfillment of a promise many Republicans made in last fall’s political campaigns.
The measure has little or no chance of passing the Senate, where Democratic supporters of the law have a majority. And Obama has vowed to veto if it reaches his desk.
Federal grand jury indicts Gabrielle Giffords’ shooting suspect
PHOENIX (AP) — A federal grand jury has indicted the suspect in the deadly Arizona shooting that wounded Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.
The indictment against Jared Loughner (LAWF’-ner) accuses him of attempting to assassinate Giffords and trying to kill two of her aides.
It does not include two murder charges included in an earlier criminal complaint for the deaths of another Giffords aide and a federal judge.
Six people were killed and 13 wounded in the Jan. 8 attack at a grocery store. State charges are pending.
STATE/LOCAL
Gun found on school campus by Lafayette police after acting on tip
Lafayette (AP)—Acting on a tip that a student may have brought a handgun to the W. D. Smith Career Center, Lafayette police found a 15-year-old with the weapon.
Lafayette Police School Resource Officers on Wednesday found the boy with a handgun inside a classroom.
Police said in a news release that the gun, a .25-caliber semiautomatic pistol, was not loaded and the student did not have any ammunition with him.
The pistol was recovered and the student was booked with possession of a firearm in a school zone.
1 of 6 ex-officers get trial in shooting case
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A federal judge on Wednesday ordered a separate trial for one of six current or former police officers charged in an alleged plot to cover up deadly shootings of unarmed residents of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.
U.S. District Judge Kurt Engelhardt scheduled a trial for retired Sgt. Gerard Dugue to begin Sept. 26. A trial for the other five defendants is set to begin in June and last several weeks.