Sumatra prepares warning system
On Board The Sonne, Indonesia A team of German and Indonesian scientists will set sail today for Sumatra island to install a tsunami warning system in the region worst hit by last year’s Asian killer wave.
The system of sensors on the ocean floor and giant buoys on its surface will be able to notify coastal observation stations within 10 minutes of a tsunami-strength earthquake.
The system transmits information about earthquake activity to the stations via satellite. They will then automatically alert local media and residents via mobile phone text message, e-mail and fax, said Idwan Suhardi, a scientist from Indonesia’s ministry of research and technology.
It will be operational in Sumatra by the end of the year, said Suhardi.
“The system offers the possibility of very fast and also reliable warnings,” said Freider Meyer Krahmer, state secretary at Germany’s Ministry of Education and Research, at a ceremony on board the Sonne, a German research vessel.
Schwarzenegger asks McCain for help
Burbank, Calif. With his popularity at an all-time low, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger turned Monday to Republican Sen. John McCain to help sell his November ballot proposals to a skeptical public.
In a brief appearance with the governor in a hotel conference room, the Arizona senator urged California voters to support the four initiatives backed by Schwarzenegger on the special election ballot.
“I have campaigned for reform efforts all over the country,” McCain said. “What happens in California has significant effect in states like mine that are nearby. It’s just a reality.”
Schwarzenegger, a Republican, is pushing a quartet of proposals that he has described as medicine for a sickly government. They would cap state spending, strip lawmakers of the power to draw political boundaries, lengthen the probationary period for teachers from two years to five, and require public employee unions to get members’ permission before dues could be used for political purposes.
McCain’s visit comes at a crucial time for Schwarzenegger. With the election less than a month away, three of the four initiatives he supports are trailing in polls, and many Californians have turned cold on his leadership.
Court gives visitation to grandparents
Columbus, Ohio The Ohio Supreme Court ruled Monday that grandparents can be awarded visitation rights with grandchildren over a parent’s wishes in some circumstances.
The court’s unanimous decision sided with maternal grandparents who wanted to visit a granddaughter following the death of her mother but were challenged by the girl’s father.
The girl’s parents were never married and the father said the grandparents tried to turn the girl against him.
The grandparents had raised the girl until she was 5 years old after the mother died of cancer.
Monday’s ruling said Ohio law properly balances the wishes of parents and the best interests of a child.
Man pleads guilty to killing parents
Chattanooga, Tenn. A man who said he was heeding a call from God when he gunned down his parents and used a chain saw to cut up his mother’s body pleaded guilty Monday to first-degree murder.
Philip Badowski, 23, entered the plea after a judge turned down his attorney’s motion to suppress evidence in the December 2004 slayings. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
Badowski’s attorney had argued unsuccessfully that the police search of the home in suburban Hixson was inadmissible, because officers had to break into the parents’ bedroom to find the bodies.
A state psychiatric evaluation previously showed Badowski competent for trial, but public defender Mary Ann Green said after Monday’s hearing that Badowski “is mentally ill.”
Green said he is afflicted with “schizophrenia or a bipolar disorder or both.”