NATION IN BRIEF

Snow covers tulips in Milwaukee during a Midwest storm that closed schools and grounded flights. (By Morry Gash -- Associated Press)

Appeals Court Hears S.D. Abortion Debate

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The South Dakota government and Planned Parenthood dueled over the beginnings of life and the rights of abortion doctors and patients Wednesday in a St. Louis federal court. Five months after voters rejected a law all but outlawing abortion, the appellate hearing focused on the conservative legislature's attempt to define what doctors must tell pregnant women considering the procedure.

Doctors would be required to tell their patients that an abortion "will terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being" and that "by having an abortion, her existing relationship and her existing constitutional rights with regards to that relationship will be terminated."

Planned Parenthood of Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota, which operates the state's only abortion clinic, won a preliminary injunction in 2005 that stopped the law from taking effect. After a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit upheld the ruling 2 to 1, the full circuit agreed to decide whether the injunction should remain while the case is decided.

Planned Parenthood, which contends the South Dakota law violates the First Amendment, argues that the law is grounded more in ideology than science and is designed to intimidate women.

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· ATLANTA -- A bid to hang Coretta Scott King's portrait in the state Capitol died in a legislative committee. The resolution would have urged the Capitol Standards Arts Commission to hang the portrait next to a picture of her late husband, Martin Luther King Jr., but the three-member House Special Rules Committee declined to move the proposal forward.

· MELBOURNE, Fla. -- An explosion tore apart an apartment complex, killing a father and his 8-month-old daughter and injuring seven others, officials said. Joshua Leigh Jackson, 18, and Ja'miya Jackson were found in an upstairs bedroom.

· HAPPY VALLEY, Calif. -- A fire that engulfed a rural Northern California home, severely burning the six family members found dead inside, appears to have been arson and may have been set by one of those killed, investigators said.

· CHICAGO -- Hundreds of airline flights were grounded and the Houston Astros-Chicago Cubs baseball game was called as yet another spring storm spread snow across the upper Midwest. North Dakota and South Dakota both measured about seven inches.

-- From Staff Reports and News Services