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Governor tours wildfire scene California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Matthew Bettenhausen, acting secretary of the California Emergency Management Agency, tour a neighborhood hit by wildfires in Big Tujunga Canyon in Tujunga, Calif., on Thursday. Schwarzenegger toured the community where a wildfire left dozens of homes in ruins. The blaze was 38 percent contained Thursday, up from 28 percent the previous day.
AP PHOTO
WASHINGTON, Pa.
Woman charged with rape
Police say a southwestern Pennsylvania woman raped a man and burned him with a curling iron to get him to comply.
Police say the 22-year-old man knows his alleged attacker, 23-year-old Samantha Harvey, of Washington, Pa.
Online court records don’t list an attorney for Harvey, who is jailed because the new charges violate her probation on theft and threat charges for stealing money from her grandmother in 2006.
Police charged Harvey on Tuesday after investigating the man’s claim that she forced him to have sex at his home on Aug. 20. The man told police Harvey clipped the hot curling iron to his ear and burned his genitals with it.
Harvey is also charged with involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, terroristic threats and reckless endangerment.
WASHINGTON
Obama cuts Honduran aid
The Obama administration on Thursday cut all non-humanitarian aid to Honduras over the ouster of President Manuel Zelaya, making permanent a temporary suspension of U.S. aid imposed after he was deposed in June.
The State Department made the announcement as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was meeting with Zelaya. Spokesman Ian Kelly did not say how much assistance would be cut but officials have said previously that more than $200 million is at stake. Kelly said it affected “a broad range of assistance to the government of Honduras.”
HARRISBURG
Pa. residents dislike gov’t
A new poll shows Pennsylvanians have a low opinion of their state government.
The statewide survey by Franklin & Marshall College was taken in late August, as the partisan stalemate over the state budget was nearing its third month.
The poll found only a third of Pennsylvania voters hold a favorable opinion of Gov. Ed Rendell — his lowest rating since taking office in 2003. More than two-thirds rated the Legislature’s performance as only fair or poor.
The poll showed more voters blame the Legislature than Rendell for the stalled state budget.
The telephone survey carried a sampling error margin of plus or minus 4.1 percentage points.
NEWARK, N.J.
Bike ride honors Flight 93
Relatives of the victims of Flight 93 — the United Airlines jetliner that crashed in Pennsylvania as passengers wrestled with hijackers on Sept. 11, 2001 — are honoring their loved ones with a cross-country motorcycle ride.
The flight originated in New Jersey and was bound for California when four terrorists hijacked it, and the motorcycle caravan will retrace the flight’s intended path. The caravan left Newark Liberty International Airport on Thursday morning at 8:42 a.m. — the same time as the flight — and is to arrive in San Francisco on the eighth anniversary of the attacks.