Funerals held for 3 killed in Newark

Newark, N.J.

Mourners shed tears and showed a resolve to end Newark's deadly violence at funerals Saturday for three college-age friends who were lined up against a schoolyard wall and killed by shots to the head.

Mayor Cory Booker was interrupted by applause at Metropolitan Baptist Church as he urged residents to help fight the city's alarming homicide rate.

"We need to raise our children," he said at the service for Dashon Harvey, 20, an aspiring fashion model and social-work major at Delaware State University.

The Aug. 4 slayings, plus an unrelated slaying soon afterward, brought Newark's homicide total for the year to 60. The city's homicide rate has increased 50 percent in the past decade to a total of 106 last year.

Services were also held for Terrance Aeriel, 18, at New Hope Baptist Church, and for Iofemi Hightower, 20, at Grace Temple Baptist Church.

Three people have been arrested in connection with the three slayings, and police Saturday announced a warrant for a fourth person.

Cape Canaveral, Fla.

Astronauts to probe gouge with lasers

A pair of spacewalking astronauts installed a new beam on the international space station Saturday as engineers on Earth scrutinized images of a disturbing gouge in shuttle Endeavour's heat shield.

The 3-inch gash in the shuttle's belly will be inspected in greater detail today, when the shuttle crew will pull out Endeavour's 100-foot robotic arm and extension boom and probe the difficult-to-reach area with lasers. Engineers then will determine if repairs are needed.

In another glitch, NASA said the primary U.S. command-and-control computer on the station had shut down suddenly during the spacewalk. Two backup computers immediately kicked in, but NASA engineers did not know why the computer failed. There was no word on whether it could be fixed or posed any sort of long-term problem.

Also

Storm strengthens: Hurricane Flossie strengthened to a Category 4 storm Saturday as it spun more than 1,000 miles south of Hawaii, and forecasters said it could pass by Hawaii late Tuesday or early Wednesday.

Search slowed: Divers looking for five people missing since the collapse of the Interstate 35W bridge in Minneapolis were hampered Saturday by heavy rain that strengthened the current in the Mississippi River, making it dangerous for divers around the twisted bridge wreckage, a Navy spokesman said.

Standing down: The New York Police Department reduced its extra security procedures Saturday, a day after an unsubstantiated radiological threat against the city.

Seattle Times news services