1 brother arrested in jewel heist
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SAN FRANCISCO — Police have arrested one of two brothers wanted for more than a year in connection with a record jewel heist. Dino Smith, 45, was taken into custody outside a train station in New York after San Francisco investigators followed a woman believed to be Smith's girlfriend and the couple's baby across the country.
Dino and Troy Smith, 41, had been on the run since more than $6 million in jewels were taken at gunpoint from the safes of Lang Antique & Estate Jewelry in April 2003.
A third suspect — George Turner, a childhood friend of the Smiths — was arrested soon after the heist in a beach-front motel with a bag containing some of the jewels, price tags attached. Troy Smith remains at large.
"It was a long couple of days, but now it's coming together," said San Francisco police Inspector Dan Gardner, who with his partner tracked Smith for two days before the arrest Thursday night. "Two down, one to go."
The charming, articulate Smith brothers are well-known to San Francisco law-enforcement officials. Lang's owner, Mark Zimmelman, had testified against the pair more than a decade ago after selling gems the brothers had stolen from the wife of a onetime Nicaraguan drug dealer in a home-invasion robbery.
The brothers also had been arrested in full body armor after police were tipped off to their alleged scheme to kidnap and possibly kill "Dr. Winkie," the flamboyant owner of a famous 1980s nightclub. They received long sentences in both cases, but appellate courts overturned both convictions.
Time, NBC fighting efforts to subpoena their reporters
WASHINGTON — Time magazine and NBC yesterday filed motions seeking to quash grand-jury subpoenas issued last month to compel testimony from their reporters about whether Bush administration officials leaked the name of a covert CIA operative.
The motions, claiming reporters' privilege under the First Amendment, were filed under seal in U.S. District Court, Time and NBC said.
Time and NBC are fighting subpoenas issued May 21 by a Washington grand jury led by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, the U.S. attorney in Chicago named six months ago to investigate the leak last year of CIA operative Valerie Plame's name to columnist Robert Novak and other journalists.
Fitzgerald, seeking the identity of the leaker or leakers, wants to question Matthew Cooper of Time and Tim Russert of NBC's "Meet the Press," who reported on the leak.
Conservative Episcopalians may become separate church
LONG BEACH, Calif. — Conservative Episcopalians called on the world's leading Anglican archbishops yesterday to recognize their emerging network as a separate church within the worldwide Anglican Communion unless the Episcopal Church reverses its views on homosexuality.
Conservatives associated with the newly developing Anglican Communion Network had been careful not to imply that they wanted the group to be recognized as a legitimate national church separate from the 2.3 million-member Episcopal Church.
But at the end of a two-day meeting in Long Beach, the network's Western states steering committee urged Anglican primates — archbishops of national Anglican churches — to "recognize the Anglican Communion Network as a true Anglican province (church) in North America if the Episcopal Church does not repent."
Religious groups oppose constitutional amendment
WASHINGTON — A grouping of Christian, Jewish and Sikh organizations is urging Congress to reject a proposed constitutional amendment that would ban same-sex marriage.
Twenty-six organizations said in a letter to Congress that it was not government's job to enshrine laws reflecting a specific religious view.
Among those that signed the letter were the Episcopal Church, USA; the Alliance of Baptists; seven Jewish groups; two Quaker groups; three Sikh groups; the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ); the Washington, D.C., office of the Presbyterian Church, USA; and the Unitarian Universalist Association. All are considered generally liberal.
2 buses collide, injuring 3 adults, dozen children
ST. LOUIS — A school bus and a passenger bus collided in downtown St. Louis yesterday, sending them crashing onto the grounds of a historic courthouse and injuring three adults and about a dozen children.
One of the victims, a man walking his dog, was struck by one or both of the buses. He was in critical condition. Both bus drivers also were injured.
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