Karr arrives to face child porn charges

John Mark Karr, who was briefly a suspect in the JonBenet Ramsey slaying, arrived in California to face child pornography charges late Tuesday, authorities said.

Karr, 41, arrived at Oakland International Airport with considerably less fanfare than when he was greeted by a crowd of reporters in Los Angeles last month after he was wined and dined on a flight from Thailand, where he had been arrested.

Witnesses said Karr quickly exited a commercial flight, walked down the tarmac and left the airport in a vehicle with tinted windows.

Karr, who had been held in Colorado for several weeks, was released by Boulder County authorities earlier Tuesday.

Karr, a schoolteacher, was arrested Aug. 16 after he made phone calls and wrote e-mails in which he claimed to have killed the 6-year-old beauty queen in her Boulder home in December 1996.

But DNA tests failed to connect Karr to the crime, and investigators had no evidence he was even in Boulder at the time of the slaying.

Five misdemeanor counts of child pornography possession have been pending against Karr in Sonoma since April 2001, when authorities arrested him and seized his computer, alleging that the hard drive contained five sexually oriented images of children.

Karr pleaded not guilty to all counts and was jailed for six months, but he left the country before he could be tried.

Lansing, Mich.

Legislation would require vaccine

Michigan girls entering the sixth grade next year would have to be vaccinated against cervical cancer under legislation backed Tuesday by a bipartisan group of female lawmakers.

The legislation is the first of its kind in the United States, said Republican state Sen. Beverly Hammerstrom, lead sponsor.

The vaccine was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in June for use in girls and women and has been hailed as a breakthrough in cancer prevention. It prevents infections from some strains of the sexually transmitted human papilloma virus, which can cause cervical cancer and genital warts.

A government advisory panel said that ideally, the vaccine should be given before girls become sexually active.