Nation & World Briefly 5/24

Scorched earth, craters mark Sri Lanka war zone

NORTHEAST COAST, Sri Lanka (AP) " Sri Lanka's former war zone is a wasteland, its earth scorched and pocked by craters. Cars and trucks lie overturned near bunkers beside clusters of battered tents.

The government has denied firing heavy weapons into what had been a battlefield densely populated with civilians. But the helicopter tour the military gave U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and a group of journalists Saturday revealed widespread devastation.

Civilians who escaped the zone said they came under intense shelling from both the rebels and the government.

"We ran for our lives from the shelling in the north," said one man who gave his name as Krishnathurai. "It was coming from both sides, the Tamil Tigers and the military, and we were stuck in the middle."

The sandy coastal strip where the final battles of the quarter-century civil war were fought was dotted with patches of charred earth and deep recessions. Dark craters were visible amid the grayish earth along the coast.

Obama weighs high court options

WASHINGTON (AP) " On the verge of choosing his first Supreme Court nominee, President Barack Obama has already provided a profile of the person he is likely to pick: an intellectual heavyweight with a "common touch," someone whose brand of justice means seeing life from the perspective of the powerless.

Obama is expected to announce his nominee this week, as early as Tuesday. His words, his young presidency and his own life experience reveal what the nation should expect " and help explain how the president is making a decision that will endure long after he leaves office.

"You have to have not only the intellect to be able to effectively apply the law to cases before you," Obama said in an interview carried Saturday on C-SPAN television. "But you have to be able to stand in somebody else's shoes and see through their eyes and get a sense of how the law might work or not work in practical day-to-day living."

That quality is a huge factor in picking a successor to retiring Justice David Souter. Among the others Obama is weighing: judicial philosophy, intellectual sway, gender, ethnicity, age and the politics of Senate confirmation.