AP – This undated photo provided by Florida's Flagler County Sheriff's Office shows 3-year-old Nathanial Fons …

NEW YORK – New York City investigators say a couple wanted on counterfeiting charges in Florida are believed to have abandoned a toddler from that state at St. Patrick's Cathedral days after he was reported missing.

Three-year-old Nathaniel Fons was not harmed. He was in the custody of child welfare officials Wednesday.

Police identified 29-year-old Eleanor Black and 32-year-old William Scott through surveillance footage. They are still at large.

A security guard found Nathaniel at the famed Manhattan cathedral around 6:30 p.m. Tuesday. A note in his hand gave his mother's name and the name and number of a Florida detective.

Nathaniel was reported missing Monday. His mother had been arrested on counterfeiting charges in Florida. Black and Scott are believed to be friends of hers.

Posted by biginla at 7:57 PM BST

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by Suzanne Gould, BBC News and Entertainment Reporter, for the BBC's Biodun Iginla

The "Melrose Place" star is suspected of crashing into a "no parking" sign at 4 a.m.

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Heather Locklear was arrested for hit-and-run last Saturday, the BBC has learned.

Law enforcement sources tell me at the BBC that around 4 AM, someone heard a crash near North Ranch Country Club in Westlake Village, CA.

The person who heard the crash didn't call the Ventura County Sheriff's Department until 7:48 PM that night.  Deputies went out to the area and found a knocked over "no parking" sign and obvious signs of a car that went up the curb, striking the sign.  

Deputies confirmed through investigation that the car in question was Locklear's black BMW.  The collision was very close to Locklear's home.

Deputies then went to Locklear's home, saw damage to the BMW that was consistent with the collision, and arrested her for hit-and-run.

The offense is a misdemeanor, so Locklear was not taken into custody -- just cited and released.  An official from the Ventura County Sheriff's Department tells TMZ a hit-and-run citation constitutes an "arrest."

Back in 2008, Locklear was arrested in Santa Barbara for allegedly driving under the influence of prescription medications.

She ended up pleading no contest to a misdemeanor charge of reckless driving and was placed on three years informal probation.  A Santa Barbara prosecutor tells us he's looking into the latest incident, which could be a probation violation.

Posted by biginla at 7:45 PM BST

Updated: Wednesday, 21 April 2010 7:49 PM BST

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Play Video AFP  – French government told to limit burqa ban

Reuters – A woman wearing a niqab walks at Trocadero square near the Eiffel Tower in Paris June 24, 2009. France …

PARIS – French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Wednesday ordered legislation that would ban women from wearing Islamic veils that hide the face in the street and other public places.

In seeking to forbid the garment from public view, Sarkozy defied the advice of experts sought by the government who warned that such a broad ban risked contravening France's constitution.

Such a measure would put France on the same track as Belgium, which is also moving toward a complete ban in a similar reaction as Islamic culture has come in conflict with native European values. Sarkozy has repeatedly said that such clothing oppresses women and is "not welcome" in France.

Government spokesman Luc Chatel said after Wednesday's weekly Cabinet meeting that the president decided the government should submit a bill to parliament in May on an overall ban on burqa-like veils.

"The ban on veils covering the whole face should be general, in every public space, because the dignity of women cannot be put in doubt," Chatel said.

The decision to seek a full ban, rather than a limited ban, came as a surprise. After a Cabinet meeting just a week ago, the government spokesman announced a decision for legislation that bans the veil but takes into account conclusions on the matter by the Council of State, France's highest administrative office.

The government had sought the council's opinion to ensure a law would pass constitutional muster. The Council of State advised that a full ban would be "legally very fragile." A six-month parliamentary inquiry also concluded that a full ban would raise constitutional issues, as well as enforcement problems.

"It's a transgression, an aggression even, on the level of personal liberty," said Abdellatif Lemsibak, a member of the National Federation of Muslims of France. "The Muslims have the right to an orthodox expression of their religion ... it shocks me."

France is a firmly secular country but has western Europe's largest Muslim population, estimated at some 5 million. France worries about clashes in values as well as about a spread of radical Islam. Authorities widely see the veil in light of gender equality and security issues.

In neighboring Belgium, a similar initiative for a ban on full veils in public places, including in the streets, is expected to become law in July.

Muslim leaders in France say that the face-covering veil is not a religious requirement of Islam but have cautioned against banning the garment.

The government spokesman said the French president considered that burqa-style veils that hide the face, such as niqabs, "do not pose a problem in a religious sense, but threaten the dignity of women."

The government "is ready to take legal risks because the stakes are worth it," said Prime Minister Francois Fillon.

France outlawed Muslim headscarves and other "ostentatious" religious symbols from classrooms in 2004 after a marathon parliamentary debate and, "we are acting in the same way today. We have decided to legislate," Chatel said.

Numerous school girls wore headscarves in class, but only a tiny minority of women wear the all-covering veil. Nevertheless, debate on the question of whether a law is needed and how far it should reach has continued for nearly a year.

Muslim leaders say that the debate itself has stigmatized Muslims, as has a national debate on the French identity.

Even within Sarkozy's own conservative UMP party, the question of forbidding face-covering veils in streets is divisive.

One of the party's leading lawmakers, Jean-Francois Cope, had already filed his own preliminary bill for a global ban on the garments — which should be superseded by the government's. Cope called Sarkozy's decision "wise" and said the government needs to move rapidly "so the French know that, on this point, we are truly determined."

Cope, speaking to reporters, suggested the law should be passed by the end of July — but followed by a six-month consultation period before it is applied.

Sarkozy insisted that "everything should be done so that no one feels stigmatized," Chatel said without elaborating.

The French parliament is already slated to discuss a nonbinding resolution on May 11 that sets out political principles, including the need for women to keep their faces uncovered.

_____

Posted by biginla at 7:35 PM BST

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Play Video AP  – Obama: No litmus test on abortion for court pick

• Play Video Video:Obama Begins Court Talks FOX News
• Play Video U.S. Courts Video:Obama: No litmus test on abortion for court pick AP
• Play Video U.S. Courts Video:AP Top Stories AP

AP – President Barack Obama, right, and Vice President Joe Biden and bipartisan Senate leaders discuss the …

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama, treading carefully on the explosive issue of abortion and the Supreme Court, said Wednesday he will choose a nominee who pays heed to women's rights and privacy when interpreting the Constitution.

"That's very important to me," Obama said. Yet he insisted he will not make any potential nominee pass a "litmus test" on abortion rights.

Obama consulted Senate leaders from both parties at the White House as he moved toward choosing a replacement for Justice John Paul Stevens, who turned 90 on Tuesday and is retiring.

The White House says Obama is considering about 10 people and has begun conversations with candidates. A nominee is expected within the next few weeks.

Noting that the abortion debate has long divided the country, Obama underscored his belief in a right to privacy while attempting not to box himself in.

The Supreme Court declared in 1973 through its Roe v. Wade decision that a woman has a constitutional right to an abortion, and close questioning on the issue has been a feature of Senate confirmation hearings since then. Federal courts have battled with the ramifications since the landmark decision, although the core ruling has gone untouched.

When asked if he could nominate someone who did not support a woman's right to choose, Obama said: "I am somebody who believes that women should have the ability to make often very difficult decisions about their own bodies and issues of reproduction."

As for his nominee, Obama said he would repeat the stand of other presidents by not judging candidates with a single-issue test.

"But I will say that I want somebody who is going to be interpreting our Constitution in a way that takes into account individual rights, and that includes women's rights," Obama said. "And that's going to be something that's very important to me, because I think part of what our core constitutional values promote is the notion that individuals are protected in their privacy and their bodily integrity. And women are not exempt from that."

Stevens is the leader of the liberals on the court, and the person Obama nominates is not expected to change the ideological balance among the justices. Still, Republicans can be expected to press the nominee on how future decision might be affected by his or her views on abortion and other contentious issues.

Among those under consideration are federal appeals court judges Diane Wood, Merrick Garland and Sidney Thomas, former Georgia Chief Justice Leah Ward Sears, U.S. Solicitor General Elena Kagan, Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow.

Obama praised senators of both parties for working together on a "smooth, civil, thoughtful nomination process and confirmation process" last year for Sonia Sotomayor, who replaced David Souter on the court.

"My hope is, is that we can do the exact same thing this time," he said.

Many Republican senators are wary that Obama will seek out a judicial activist who will bring a liberal agenda to the bench, and the White House is expecting what chief of staff Rahm Emanuel calls a "huge, huge battle."

Still, with 59 usually reliable votes from Democrats and independents in the Senate, Obama is in a strong position to pick the person he wants. He would need 60 votes to head off a filibuster, and White House aides are confident they can get the support they need.

Obama made his remarks at the start of a session with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the ranking Republican on the Judiciary panel.

Vice President Joe Biden, a former senator and veteran of many Supreme Court confirmation battles, joined the group as well.

The president said he plans to nominate someone by the end of May at the latest, but hopefully sooner. He wants a Senate vote in time for the new justice to hire a staff and be ready for work when the court begins its session in early October.

"There will be a new justice on the Supreme Court when the court comes back in session," Leahy declared confidently after the Oval Office meeting with Obama.

Reid said that no names of potential nominees were discussed in the meeting.

The Senate Democratic leader said he told Obama the nominee need not already be a judge, but possibly "someone who's an academic, someone who's held public office, someone who's an outstanding lawyer. And the president said he'll take that into consideration."

Reid and Leahy spoke to reporters briefly on the White House driveway after the meeting; the Republicans, McConnell and Sessions, did not.

Leahy was sharply critical of the current Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice John Roberts, a nominee of former President George W. Bush.

"We have right now a very, very activist, conservative activist, Supreme Court," Leahy said, citing recent decisions. "I think this does not reflect the American people but reflects more of a partisan agenda. I would hope that the president's nominee can get us back away from that."

___

Posted by biginla at 7:15 PM BST

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AP – Senate Majority Leader Pedro Espada, Jr., D-Bronx, speaks during a news conference at the Capitol in …

• Play Video Congress Video:Feds Confiscate Documents From Sen. Espada CBS 2 New York
• Play Video Congress Video:Will Senate Rubberstamp Treaty? FOX News
• Play Video Congress Video:Partisan Showdown Over Financial Overhaul FOX News

NEW YORK – Federal authorities have raided a government-funded clinic run by the New York Senate majority leader, and a law enforcement official tells The Associated Press that the government is looking for evidence to support possible fraud and money laundering charges.

The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation had not been completed.

The official says that authorities are building a case that could result in mail fraud, money laundering and tax fraud charges against Pedro Espada.

About a dozen investigators took away boxes of materials and Espada campaign posters from the Soundview Healthcare Network in the Bronx Wednesday.

Espada officials haven't responded to requests for comment.

___

___

Posted by biginla at 6:44 PM BST

Updated: Wednesday, 21 April 2010 6:48 PM BST

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Play Video ABC News  – Landing on Iceland's Active Volcano

• Slideshow:Iceland volcano erupts
• Play Video Video:Joy as limited flights resume over Europe AP

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Symbol	Price	Change
^DJI	11,120.92	+3.86
^GSPC	1,205.37	-1.80
^IXIC	2,499.03	-1.28

AP – A couple embrace each other after they were re-united at the arrival hall of Gatwick airport, near London, …

BERLIN – Airlines lost at least $1.7 billion in revenue during the volcanic ash crisis, an industry group said Wednesday as the debate heated up over whether European governments were justified in shutting down their airspace for so long.

Planes were flying into all of Europe's top airports — London's Heathrow, Paris' Charles de Gaulle and Germany's hub at Frankfurt. Still experts predicted it could take days — even more than a week — to clear a backlog of stranded passengers after about 102,000 flights were canceled around the world.

Eurocontrol, the air traffic control agency in Brussels, said 21,000 of the continent's 28,000 scheduled flights were going ahead Wednesday. Air traffic controllers lifted all restrictions over German airspace, but some restrictions remained over parts of Britain, Ireland and France.

Spain, which has remained mostly open throughout the crisis, developed into a key emergency travel hub, arranging for hundreds of special flights to move over 40,000 people stranded by the travel disruptions.

In London, Britain's transport secretary, Andrew Adonis, denied that the government decided to reopen the skies to air travel under pressure from airlines.

"They have obviously wanted to be able to fly their planes — of course they have — but that has not been the issue at stake here," he told the BBC.

But British Airways initiated a showdown by announcing Tuesday it had more than 20 long-haul planes in the air and wanted to land them in London. Despite being told that British air space was firmly shut, radar tracking sites showed several BA planes circling in holding patterns over England late Tuesday before the surprise announcement that air space was being reopened.

"We were circling for about two hours," said Carol Betton-Dunn, 37, a civil servant who was on the first flight to land at London's Heathrow from Vancouver.

She said passengers were initially told the flight would be going to London, then that it was heading for an unspecified European airport, then that it was going to Shannon airport in western Ireland.

"It's been exhausting," Betton-Dunn said.

The British Airways chief was unrepentant.

"I don't believe it was necessary to impose a blanket ban on all U.K. airspace last Thursday," said BA chief executive Willie Walsh. "My personal belief is that we could have safely continued operating for a period of time."

In Berlin, Giovanni Bisignani, the head of the International Air Transport Association, called the economic fallout from the six-day travel shutdown "devastating" and urged European governments to examine ways to compensate airlines for lost revenues, as the U.S. government did following the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks.

He said it would take three years for the industry to recover from the week of lost flying time.

Airlines lost $400 million each day during the first three days of grounding, Bisignani told a news conference Wednesday. At one stage, 29 percent of global aviation and 1.2 million passengers a day were affected by the airspace closure ordered by European governments, who feared the risk that volcanic ash could pose to airplanes.

"For an industry that lost $9.4 billion last year and was forecast to lose a further $2.8 billion in 2010, this crisis is devastating," Bisignani said. "Governments should help carriers recover the cost of this disruption."

He noted that the scale of the crisis eclipsed the events of Sept. 11, when U.S. airspace was closed for three days.

German aviation agency Deutsche Flugsicherung said the decision to reopen the country's airspace Wednesday was based on weather data, not economics. It said the concentration of volcano ash in the sky "considerably decreased and will continue to dwindle."

"Bremen, Hamburg, Hannover, Berlin, Frankfurt and Munich are open again," said spokesman Axel Raab.

"We cannot say what it will look like in the next few days. If the volcano becomes active again, new closures might happen," Raab added.

A test flight carried out by the German Aerospace Center found various levels of volcanic ash at different sites over Germany. The highest concentration of ash was over eastern Germany, which the report said was comparable in density to a plume of dust above the Saharan desert. The airspace above the northern city of Hamburg was entirely free from ash.

The center reported no damage to the airplane that flew the test flight.

The Finnish Air Force said volcanic ash dust was found in the engine of an F-18 Hornet jet but it caused no significant damage to the aircraft. Officials say the fighter-bomber's engine had "contaminants on its inside surfaces" that would be further analyzed.

A French weather service plane also took samples of the air Tuesday and found no volcanic ash problems either, transport minister Dominique Bussereau said.

Ryanair chief executive Michael O'Leary was one of many airline executives calling the airspace shutdowns excessive.

"It might have made sense to ground flights for a day or two. That's understandable. But there should have been a much faster response by the governments, the transport ministers and the regulators," he told The Associated Press.

"Nobody in their right mind would want to fly through a dark plume of smoke. But by the time that that cloud has dispersed through 800 or 1,000 nautical miles of air space, a full ban should never have been imposed," O'Leary said.

But Eamonn Brennan, chief executive of Irish Aviation Authority, defended the governments' responses. He said there was "no safe, quick fix" for the problem and the closures allowed Europe to come up with a risk-mitigation scheme to handle an unprecedented situation.

"It's important to realize that we've never experienced in Europe something like this before. So it wasn't just a simple matter of saying: Yes, you could have operated on Saturday or Sunday or Monday," he told the AP. "We needed the four days of test flights, the empirical data, to put this together and to understand the levels of ash that engines can absorb."

In Iceland, where all the trouble began with an April 14 eruption, there was no sign Wednesday that the Eyjafjallajokull (ay-yah-FYAH-lah-yer-kuhl) volcano would stop erupting anytime soon, according to Pall Einarsson, a geophysicist at the Institute of Earth Sciences in Reykjavik.

"We cannot predict when it will end," he said. "(But) ash production is going down and is really insignificant at the moment."

However, scientists at Zurich's Federal Institute of Technology said Wednesday that an initial analysis of atmospheric data over Zurich showed that closing Europe's airspace was warranted for safety reasons.

The scientists analyzed samples collected over the weekend by specially equipped weather balloons and concluded that the concentration of particles was "very high," at up to 600 micrograms per cubic meter, according to Prof. Thomas Peter.

The scientists also said the composition of the volcano's magma is changing, causing some concern that it might take on a more explosive form.

According to Peter Ulmer, a professor of petrology, the volcano has been pushing out magma with a higher silicate content since April 14. If the level of silicate reaches 56 percent or the share of magnesium falls below 4 percent, then the magma can become explosive even without the presence of huge ice caps like the current volcano.

At Heathrow's Terminal 3 on Wednesday, no one was allowed inside the departures level without a valid ticket. The departure boards still showed about half the flights as canceled.

Despite the uncertainty, passengers were optimistic. Juanjo Dominguez, a 25-year-old web designer from London, was at the airport for his afternoon flight to New York.

I feel good, hopeful," Dominguez said. "I am still keeping my fingers crossed."

Still, there was just a small trickle of passengers arriving at Heathrow.

Emirates airline, the Mideast's biggest, sent 37 flights from Dubai to Europe, including 12 flights to Britain and seven to Germany. Its first flight to land in Britain was a double-decker Airbus A380 carrying more than 500 people.

The airport in Barcelona — near the border with France and thus a gateway to the rest of Europe — took in flights from New York, Orlando, Vancouver, Paris, Nice and Rome. Nearly 300 buses were chartered from Barcelona and Spain to get people to other cities in Europe.

At Bilbao in northern Spain, more than 2,000 weary Britons packed a ferry Wednesday and headed for England after days of trying to escape the volcanic ash travel nightmare.

The ferry normally takes 1,000 people on its twice-weekly, 30-hour trip to Portsmouth in southern England. This time, however, it was carrying around 2,200 people and had to ask strangers to share sleeper cabins.

Sam Gunn, 42, from the English city of Birmingham, endured two hungry days sleeping at JFK Airport in New York after his flight home was canceled. He settled for a flight to Madrid, then caught a long bus up to Bilbao to get on the ferry.

"Oh, I've been traveling all over the world," he said, chuckling.

___

Posted by biginla at 6:24 PM BST

Updated: Wednesday, 21 April 2010 6:26 PM BST

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============================================================
by Biodun Iginla, BBC News ,London
============================================================

------------------------------------------------------------
Presented by Jeremy Paxman
------------------------------------------------------------


Hi Biodun!!!

Tomorrow night sees the second of three Leaders' Debates between Gordon
Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg.

The Liberal Democrat leader is widely perceived to have 'won' the first
debate which led to a sudden surge in support for the party - described
by our Political editor, Michael Crick, as "certainly the most
interesting development in any election in the 30 years in which I have
been covering them".

Michael is in Bristol tonight, keeping an eye on the preparations for
tomorrow's debate, and he'll be assessing what the Labour and
Conservative strategies for dealing with the Lib Dems might be.

Our Diplomatic editor Mark Urban will also be looking ahead to
tomorrow's foreign affairs debate where Trident is likely to be a key
focus, with Brown and Cameron expected to attack Clegg over his
proposals to scrap it. Read more on Mark's blog - where he also recounts a
memorable lunch at which former Newsnight presenter Peter Snow pressed
naval chiefs about Trident's phallic symbolism:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/newsnight/markurban/2010/04/trident_how_relevant_is_the_mo.html

Britain's unemployment figures have reached their highest since 1994
with 2.5 million people now out of work. Our Economics editor Paul Mason
is in Redditch  - the West Midlands new town which is home to light
industry and Halfords' headquarters - to speak to people there about
unemployment, and to investigate what the three main parties are
planning to do to create jobs in the future.

And comedian Danny Robins returns with the next instalment of
Newsnight's Party Anthems - where he helps the three big parties set
their manifesto promises to music to try to get their political messages
across. Watch his first attempts at songs for Labour here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/8629813.stm

For the Conservatives here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/8634703.stm

And for the Lib Dems here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/8629933.stm

Join Jeremy at 10.30pm on BBC Two.

Posted by biginla at 5:59 PM BST

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