Bush’s road ban repeal called legal

The Bush administration had the right to overturn a ban on road construction in untouched parts of national forests, but may have needed to weigh possible environmental effects at the same time, a federal judge said Tuesday.

U.S. District Judge Elizabeth Laporte said the Forest Service appeared to be “on solid ground” last year when it reversed a Clinton administration rule banning new roads on nearly a third of federal forests.

But she questioned whether the agency violated federal law by skipping environmental studies — the heart of two lawsuits brought by 20 environmental groups and the states of California, Oregon, New Mexico and Washington.

Laporte said she did not know when she would issue a final decision.

NEW YORK

Ruling lets feds see N.Y. Times records

Federal prosecutors investigating a leak about a terrorism funding probe can see the phone records of two New York Times reporters, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday.

A panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned on a 2-1 vote a lower court’s ruling that the records were off limits unless prosecutors could show they had exhausted all other means of finding out who spoke to the newspaper. The newspaper was considering an appeal, its lawyers said.

The case involved stories written in 2001 by Times reporters Judith Miller and Philip Shenon that revealed the government’s plans to freeze the assets of two Islamic charities, the Holy Land Foundation and the Global Relief Foundation.

Heat wave hits eastern U.S.

Blistering heat settled over the eastern half of the nation Tuesday, sending man and beast in desperate search of relief.

The same heat wave that was blamed for as many as 164 deaths in California brought a fifth straight day of oppressive weather to Chicago and promised at least three days of brow-mopping temperatures in the New York metropolitan area.

Residents on Chicago’s South Side were evacuated from buildings by the hundreds, one day after the power went out to 20,000 customers. Illinois officials blamed three deaths on the heat. The blistering temperatures also scorched Conyers, Ga., where a high school football player died one day after collapsing at practice.

By midafternoon, the temperature in Chicago was 100, Baltimore reached 99 and Washington hit 97. In New York, it was 95 in Central Park and 100 at LaGuardia Airport in Queens.

CENTENNIAL, Colo.

Woman jailed for keeping ‘slave’

A woman was sentenced to two months in jail Tuesday for effectively stealing the services of an Indonesian woman who prosecutors said was held as a virtual slave for four years.

Sarah Khonaizan, 35, a Saudi citizen who lives in suburban Denver, also was ordered on the theft charge to pay $90,000 in restitution and was ordered not to have any contact with the 24-year-old woman.

Prosecutors and FBI agents accused Khonaizan and her husband, Homaidan Al-Turki, 37, of hiding the woman’s passport and forcing her to care for the family for four years.