Fire during service damages church
A fire that began during Sunday morning services at a crowded Massachusetts church quickly spread through the decades-old building and gutted it.
About 300 people were inside the meeting house of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Boston suburb of Cambridge. Officials said everyone was able to make it outside safely.
Fire Chief Gerald Reardon said the blaze started in the building’s attic.
Witnesses say attendance at the church was larger than usual because the parish was part of a national teleconference with Mormon church leaders in Utah. The roof of the 60-year-old building collapsed, but the steeple remains standing.
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.
Boy’s body found in playground
Two days after the body of a small boy was found buried in the sand at a city park playground, stymied investigators focused Sunday on trying to find the child’s relatives.
“We are looking for the person who was the primary caretaker of the child, whether it is a parent, a grandparent or guardian. That’s our primary responsibility now,” police spokesman John Walsh said.
A preliminary autopsy on Saturday provided no immediate clues about how the 3- to 5-year-old child died.
Walsh said the preliminary autopsy did determine that the child was either Native American or Hispanic.
LOS ANGELES
Small earthquake shakes city
A moderate earthquake shook the Los Angeles area Sunday evening, but there were no immediate reports of major injuries or damage.
A preliminary report by the U.S. Geological Survey said a magnitude-4.7 quake hit at 8:39 p.m., about 10 miles southwest of downtown Los Angeles.
The quake jiggled the greater Los Angeles region for about 10 to 15 seconds and was felt as far south as San Diego, USGS seismologist Susan Hough said.
NEW YORK
Dowd admits use of blogger’s words
New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd has admitted to using a paragraph virtually word-for-word from a prominent liberal blogger without attribution.
Dowd acknowledged the error in an e-mail to the Huffington Post on Sunday, the Web site reported. The Times corrected her column online to give proper credit for the material to Talking Points Memo editor Josh Marshall.
The newspaper is expected to issue a formal correction today.
The error appeared in Dowd’s Sunday column, in which she criticized the Bush administration’s use of interrogation methods in the run-up to the Iraq war.
Dowd told the Huffington Post that the mistake was unintentional. She claims she never read Marshall’s post nd had heard the line from a friend who did not mention reading it in Marshall’s blog.
From wire reports