NATION IN BRIEF

Saturday, November 11, 2006

'Malcolm X' Pages Damaged

DETROIT -- The owner of Alex Haley's original manuscript for "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" has sued a Detroit museum over damage to 15 unpublished pages that occurred while they were on display.

The pages -- which include Malcolm X's unpublished 13-point plan for African Americans to achieve true integration through economic, social and political empowerment -- have turned from white to brownish-yellow. They bear a white stripe from being held down by bands while on display from 1997 until about 2002 at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History.

An attorney for the Keeper of the Word Foundation, the Michigan nonprofit that owns the manuscript, said museum officials have refused to file an insurance claim to cover the damage, estimated at $168,000, offering instead to try to have the pages restored.

Museum officials would not discuss the lawsuit, filed in Wayne County Circuit Court.

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· NEW YORK -- The only person to be hospitalized after a plane crashed into a high-rise apartment building last month has left the hospital. Ilana Benhuri suffered severe burns after the plane slammed into her 30th-floor apartment on Manhattan's Upper East Side on Oct. 11. The crash killed the plane's occupants, New York Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle and flight instructor Tyler Stanger, and injured 23.

· MIAMI -- A man who donated $20 million to Florida International University's medical school took back the gift after the donor thought FIU President Modesto A. Maidique insulted him. Herbert Wertheim said Maidique told him he had gotten the naming rights "on the cheap" and that the university "could now get $100 million for it." Maidique apologized in a letter.

· BRADENTON, Fla. -- Florida's only living World War I veteran was awarded his long-delayed World War I Victory Medal by Gov. Jeb Bush. Ernest Charles Pusey, 111, recalled for Bush his service on the battleship USS Wyoming nearly 90 years ago. The U.S. government reports there are fewer than 25 living U.S. veterans of World War I, out of nearly 5 million who served.

· NEEDLES, Calif. -- Pacific Gas and Electric Co. apologized for desecrating the sacred site of an American Indian tribe where it built a $15 million water-treatment plant, which the company pledged to remove as soon as another can be built. Topock Maze, near Needles, is claimed by the 1,100-member Fort Mojave tribe as part of its heritage.

· YAKIMA, Wash. -- The cleanup at Mount Rainier National Park will take weeks after nearly 18 inches of rain fell in 36 hours. The deluge forced park officials to close the gates for the first time in 26 years. Montana's Glacier National Park received close to a foot of rain, causing widespread flooding and damaging the popular Going-to-the-Sun Road.

· LAS CRUCES, N.M. -- A federal judge dismissed a lawsuit that sought to stop the city of Las Cruces from using three Christian crosses on its logo. Three plaintiffs had contended the city government's use of crosses -- three overlapping crosses in the center of a sun -- violated the First Amendment by endorsing and advancing a religion. Las Cruces means "the crosses" in Spanish, and U.S. District Judge Robert C. Brack said the city's use could be considered secular.

· NEW YORK -- Vandals beheaded a statue of George Washington at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, leaving a dollar bill on what was left of the neck, police said. The statue is part of a church collection of historical figures spanning 2,000 years.

· HOUSTON -- Texas has awarded more than $450,000 to a man who was exonerated by DNA evidence after spending 18 years in prison after a sexual-assault conviction. Arthur Mumphrey was released in January.

-- From News Services