Surviving Fall Into Strip Mine Pit

ALLENTOWN, Pa. - A man survived a 500-foot fall into a strip mine Friday, astounding rescuers who spent hours on a risky descent into the abyss to bring him back out.

Police said Nathan Bowman was trespassing on coal company property around 1 a.m. Friday when he slipped and fell into the Springdale Pit, an inactive mine about 700 feet deep, 3,000 feet long and 1,500 feet wide.

Bowman tumbled down a jagged slope and then free-fell several hundred feet, his descent broken by a rock ledge not far from the bottom of the pit.

Wall Street Rallies Up Fourth Straight Day

Earnings Relief Rallies Stocks
By Peter A. McKay

Stocks leapt as investors hailed both Citigroup's horrid but not as bad as expected earnings report and surprisingly strong results at bellwethers in industries away from Wall Street.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose for a fourth straight day, finishing up 228.87 points, or 1.8%, at a three-month high 12849.36, down 3.1% on the year. The blue-chip indicator was boosted by a 4.5% jump in its component Citigroup after the banking giant announced early Friday that it swung to a $5.11 billion first-quarter loss as it booked more than $13 billion in write-downs amid surging credit costs.

416 Children Taken By The State

The 416 children, ranging from infants to 17 years old, were removed from the communal ranch near Eldorado starting April 3, after authorities said they had received a phone call from a 16 year old girl saying she had a child and had been beaten and raped by her 50-year-old spiritual husband. During Thursday’s hearing, authorities admitted that they had not identified the girl among the children removed from the ranch.

Ms. Voss, the state investigator, testified that several girls said they knew the caller, who had identified herself as Sarah. But they were uncooperative under further questioning, Ms. Voss said.

The children were taken from the 1,691-acre Yearning for Zion ranch operated by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, which long ago broke away from the mainstream Mormon Church.

The question facing Judge Walther is whether the children on the ranch were abused or whether they are at risk of being abused. Among the difficulties facing authorities was identifying which children were abused. And the judge might have to decide whether the community’s practice of under-age marriage meant the entire culture constituted a danger to children.

Not A Corporate Deer Hunting Retreat: Fundamentalist Church of Latter-Day Saints

The men in Western shirts and jeans who appeared in the west Texas town of Eldorado in 2003 said they were shopping for land to build a corporate hunting retreat. The 1,691-acre former exotic game ranch was just what they were looking for. Set amid rolling hills of rocky scrub dotted with mesquite trees, oil rigs and goat ranches, it was remote, and the land was cheap.

But the sheriff and other residents of Schleicher County soon discovered that their new neighbors had much more on their agenda than deer hunting. Leaders of the Fundamentalist Church of Latter-day Saints (FLDS), a renegade sect that broke with mainstream Mormons (who banned polygamy in 1890), were under siege by authorities in Utah and Arizona. Their enclave of 10,000 based in the twin cities of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz., openly practiced "plural marriage"—their ticket to heaven, they believe—via clandestine ceremonies for "celestial" brides to circumvent bigamy laws.

Yet polygamy, though illegal, didn't spark the crackdown in recent years. Church members, including their prophet Warren Jeffs, were under investigation for marrying off girls as young as 13. Women and girls who fled the group, and boys pushed out or abandoned, told stories of forced marriages, incest and abuse. Some who left called it a destructive cult.

Airline Inspections Cause Massive Flight Cancellations

American Airlines canceled another 900 flights on Thursday, or about 40 percent of its daily total of 2,300, after making only slight progress in getting its 300 MD-80 jetliners flying again.

The MD-80s, used mainly on domestic routes, account for nearly half of American’s total fleet of full-size passenger jets. They were grounded Tuesday afternoon for re-inspection of the wiring bundles in their wheel wells, after the Federal Aviation Administration said that some bundles were not secured properly.

The airline, the nation’s largest, canceled 460 flights on Tuesday and 1,094 flights on Wednesday, stranding thousands of travelers and affecting the plans of more than 100,000 people.

Red Drum Caught Off Hilton Head Island, South Carolina