Nation & world briefly

Tour helicopter, small plane collide over NYC's Hudson River, killing all 9 aboard

NEW YORK (AP) - A small plane collided with a sightseeing helicopter carrying Italian tourists over the Hudson River on Saturday, scattering debris in the water and forcing people on the New Jersey waterfront to scamper for cover. Authorities believe all nine people aboard the two aircraft were killed.

Another helicopter pilot on the ground at the heliport for Liberty Tours, which operated the doomed sightseeing craft, saw the plane approaching the helicopter and tried to radio an alert to the pilots, police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said. The warning wasn't heard or didn't happen in time.

The collision, which Mayor Michael Bloomberg said was "not survivable," happened just after noon and was seen by thousands of people enjoying a crystal-clear summer day from the New York and New Jersey sides of the river.

"First I saw a piece of something flying through the air. Then I saw the helicopter going down into the water," said Kelly Owen, a Florida tourist at a Manhattan park. "I thought it was my imagination."

The two aircraft went down just south of the stretch of river where a US Airways jet landed safely seven months ago. But this time, there was no miracle.

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Sonia Sotomayor becomes 111th Supreme Court justice; court's first Hispanic, third woman

WASHINGTON (AP) - Sonia Sotomayor became the Supreme Court's newest justice Saturday, pledging during a brief ceremony at the high court to defend the Constitution and administer impartial justice.

Sotomayor, 55, is the first Hispanic justice and only the third woman in the court's 220-year history.

She took the second of two oaths of office from Chief Justice John Roberts in an ornate conference room, beneath a portrait of the legendary Chief Justice John Marshall. Her left hand resting on a Bible that was held by her mother, Celina, Sotomayor pledged to "do equal right to the poor and to the rich."

Minutes earlier, she swore a first oath in a private ceremony in the room where the justices hold their private conferences.

Sotomayor wore a cream-colored suit and her right ankle, fractured in a fall a couple of weeks after her nomination to the court, was unbandaged. Her 60 or so guests included Justice Anthony Kennedy, White House counsel Greg Craig and other members of the Obama administration team that helped prepare her for her Senate confirmation hearings, family and friends.

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Pakistani official says Taliban infighting led to shootout after Mehsud's death disputed

ISLAMABAD (AP) - Senior Taliban commanders denied that their leader, Baitullah Mehsud, had been killed in a CIA missile strike, while conflicting reports emerged late Saturday of a clash between rival Taliban factions during a meeting to chose a successor.

Interior Minister Rahman Malik said authorities had received information about a fight breaking out during a meeting, or shura, between groups led by Hakimullah, one of the Taliban's most powerful commanders, and Waliur Rehman. Both are believed to be top contenders to replace Mehsud should reports of his death in Wednesday's strike prove true.

"We had the information that one of them is dead. So the information is being verified. We need to see the dead bodies, we need to do some DNA, we need to have something solid," Malik told local television.

He said the incident occurred Friday. However, Hakimullah spoke to an AP reporter on Saturday morning, when he called to claim that Mehsud was alive.

A senior government official, who could not be named due to the sensitivity of the situation, cast doubt on the claim.

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Obama says health care overhaul is key to economic recovery as opposition mounts

WASHINGTON (AP) - Using better-than-expected jobs numbers to press his top domestic priority, President Barack Obama is arguing that overhauling the health care system is essential to the country's economic well-being.

Republicans countered that the high unemployment rate - 9.4 percent in July - shows how families and businesses are struggling and that Obama's reliance on a large government role in expanding health coverage is the wrong approach.

A net total of 247,000 jobs were lost last month, the fewest in a year and a drastic improvement from the 443,000 that vanished in June as the U.S. tries to pull out from the worst recession since World War II.

"We've begun to put the brakes on this recession and ... the worst may be behind us," Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address Saturday. He cited Friday's Labor Department report that showed a dip in unemployment, but said, "We must do more than rescue our economy from this immediate crisis. We must rebuild it stronger than before."

He added: "We must lay a new foundation for future growth and prosperity, and a key pillar of a new foundation is health insurance reform."

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French academic, employees of British, French embassies confess in Iran's postelection trial

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - A young French academic and local staff of the British and French embassies stood trial Saturday with dozens of Iranian opposition figures and confessed to being involved in the country's postelection unrest.

Iran's opposition and rights groups have condemned the trial as a sham and say such confessions are coerced and scripted. Britain, which seemed caught off guard by the appearance of its embassy employee, called it an outrage, while France demanded the immediate release of its citizen.

Saturday's second hearing at Tehran's Revolutionary Court involved a new group of detainees and focused on testimony from the French academic and the two other foreign-linked defendants, demonstrating the government's resolve to taint Iran's pro-reform movement as a tool of foreign countries - particularly Britain and the United States.

The prosecutor accused the two countries of fomenting the unrest in an attempt to engineer a "soft overthrow" of the government.

The French academic and the two embassy employees took turns standing at a podium in the large, wood-paneled courtroom to make confessions before a judge seated between two large portraits for Iran's supreme leader and the Islamic Republic's founder.

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Experts: Husband in NY wrong-way crash trying to repair wife's reputation before legal battles

GARDEN CITY, N.Y. (AP) - There isn't much chance the husband of Diane Schuler could face criminal charges for the fiery crash she caused while driving the wrong way on a highway, killing herself and seven others, attorneys agree.

Prosecutors would have to prove Daniel Schuler was aware his wife was intoxicated - and failed to stop her - when she packed her two children and three nieces into a minivan at an upstate campground for the ride home to Long Island. A witness who saw her there said she was sober, and state police have said she wasn't impaired an hour after she left.

So what was defense attorney Dominic Barbara doing when he paraded the teary-eyed widower before a mob of reporters this week to dispute autopsy findings that Diane Schuler was high on marijuana and drunk when she smashed head-on into a sport utility vehicle?

Attorneys suspect it was the first step in trying to soften the hearts of potential jurors for civil litigation that some victims' families intend to pursue.

"For obvious reasons, the family wants to rehabilitate this lady's reputation," said attorney Vincent Trimarco, who is not involved in the case. "She's not the most popular person out there. To most people, she committed a murder."

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Priest at Pa. health club victim's funeral: Gunman darkening classroom lights fits evil intent

GREEN TREE, Pa. (AP) - Before Elizabeth "Betsy" Gannon and two other women were shot dead and nine more were wounded in their aerobics classroom at a health club, the gunman paused to shut off the lights.

The priest who conducted Gannon's funeral Saturday said that was only fitting.

"Because that's what evil is all about - cowardice. Evil can't function any other way but in the dark," the Rev. Francis "Bud" Murhammer told about 200 mourners at St. Margaret of Scotland Parish Church in Green Tree, a tiny suburb just south of Pittsburgh.

Murhammer was referring to the acts of George Sodini, a bitter loner who was unlucky with women and fatally shot Gannon, Heidi Overmier and Jody Billingsley before killing himself.

Overmier's funeral also was Saturday, a few miles southwest at the First United Methodist Church of Bridgeville, less than a mile from the L.A. Fitness center in Collier Township, where the shootings happened Tuesday night.

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As 'clunkers' program reaches new stage, dealers struggling to keep enough new cars on lots

NEW YORK (AP) - The nation's car dealers have a new worry: they're running out of vehicles.

As the "cash-for-clunkers" program reaches its next chapter, and consumers pour into showrooms, some dealers say their stock of new cars - especially for fuel-efficient smaller models - is waning.

At Larry Miller Honda in Boise, Idaho, about two-thirds of the car lot is empty. The dealership is nearly out of 2009 models - something that usually doesn't happen until the late fall.

And the situation is so dire at a Chrysler, Dodge and Jeep dealership in Beaver Springs, Pa., that the owner, Michael Andretta, is essentially shutting down this weekend to repave his car lot.

"I'm out of cars," Andretta said. "I do not have a single car in my dealership that qualifies for anything."

Such a scenario amounts to a complete shift from earlier in the year, when hard-hit dealers saw cars pile up as consumers largely shunned big-ticket purchases.

It also reflects the rampant popularity of the incentive program, which gives car owners vouchers of up to $4,500 to trade in older, gas-guzzling vehicles for new, cleaner varieties.

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Beatles fans swarm Abbey Road on 40th anniversary of album's iconic photo

LONDON (AP) - Hundreds of Beatles fans swarmed Abbey Road on Saturday, singing songs and snarling traffic to mark 40 years since John, Paul, George and Ringo strode across the leafy north London street and into the history books on iconic pop photos.

The famous photo graced the cover of the Fab Four's "Abbey Road," the last album recorded together, and shows the bandmates walking purposefully across the zebra-striped asphalt.

It remains one of music's best-known album covers, endlessly imitated and parodied. Although the shoot itself only took a few minutes, so carefully studied was the cover for signs and symbolism that some die-hard fans came to the conclusion that Paul McCartney - who appears barefoot and out of step with the rest - had secretly died.

McCartney himself made fun of the bizarre conspiracy in the title of his 1993 concert album, "Paul is Live."

Conspiracies aside, the ease with which fans can imitate the scene has drawn throngs of tourists to the site every day, turning the street into "a shrine to the Beatles," said Richard Porter, who owns the nearby Beatles Coffee Shop and organized Saturday's event.

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David Ortiz says supplements may have landed him on drug list; MLB questions test results

NEW YORK (AP) - David Ortiz said he never knowingly used steroids and that over-the-counter supplements and vitamins likely caused him to land on a list of alleged drug users circulated by the federal government.

Major League Baseball and the players' union said just because a player's name was on the list didn't mean he used steroids.

"I definitely was a little bit careless back in those days when I was buying supplements and vitamins over the counter - legal supplements, legal vitamins over the counter - but I never buy steroids or use steroids," Ortiz said during a news conference that began about 3 1/2 hours before his Boston Red Sox played the New York Yankees.

"I never thought that buying supplements and vitamins, it was going to hurt anybody's feelings."

MLB said in a statement Saturday that at most 96 urine samples tested positive in the 2003 survey - and the players' association said 13 of those were in dispute.

The New York Times reported last month that Ortiz and Manny Ramirez were on the list and said in June that Sammy Sosa was on it. In February, Sports Illustrated reported Alex Rodriguez was on the list, and Rodriguez later admitted using Primobolan from 2001-03.