Guardian Angels Set Up Patrols At DC Metro Station

WASHINGTON (AP) — The D.C. chapter of the Guardian Angels says members will start patrolling Metro's green line three nights a week after a large fight broke out at a station over the weekend, injuring four people.

Chapter leader John Ayala says between eight and two dozen people will be involved in first green line patrol on Tuesday evening.

Ayala says the group already patrols the area around the Gallery Place/Chinatown station on Friday nights. He says fights break out all the time, but not as large as the one that reportedly involved dozens of young people on Friday night.

Guardian Angels will patrol the green line between the Congress Heights and Fort Totten stations on Friday and Saturday nights and one night during the week. Ayala says they will report violent crime to Metro police.
www.dailypress.com

Reports of Former Sen. Ted Stevens Are In Conflict

UPDATE: JUNEAU, Alaska — A spokesman for the family of Ted Stevens says the former senator has died in a plane crash in Alaska.
Mitch Rose tells The Associated Press that the family had been notified that the 86-year-old Stevens was among those killed.


CBS News, which earlier reported that ex-Sen. Ted Stevens is among those killed in an Alaska plane crash, now says the information is in conflict. The network originally attributed the information to a family friend of Stevens. Below is the latest story from The Associated Press.

JUNEAU, Alaska — A plane carrying nine people crashed amid southwest Alaska's remote mountains and lakes, killing five people on board, authorities said Tuesday. Former Sen. Ted Stevens and ex-NASA chief Sean O'Keefe were believed to be aboard.

It was unclear if the longtime Republican senator and O'Keefe were among the dead.

Rescuers arrived on helicopter early Tuesday and were giving medical care to survivors, Alaska National Guard spokesman Maj. Guy Hayes said. He offered no additional details, except that there were potential fatalities.

Alaska officials reported that nine people were aboard the aircraft and that "it appears that there are five fatalities," NTSB spokesman Ted Lopatkiewicz told The Associated Press in Washington.

A U.S. government official told the AP that Alaska authorities have been told that the 86-year-old Stevens, a former longtime Republican senator, was on the plane. The official, who spoke on grounds of anonymity, says Stevens' condition is unknown.

The federal official declined to be publicly identified because the crash response and investigation are under way.

Lopatkiewicz said the NTSB is sending a team to the crash site outside Dillingham, located in northern Bristol Bay about 325 miles southwest of Anchorage. The aircraft is a DeHavilland DHC-3T registered to Anchorage-based GCI.

Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Mike Fergus said the plane took off at 2 p.m. Monday from a GCI corporate site on Lake Nerka, heading to the Agulowak Lodge on Lake Aleknagik. He didn't know if that was the final destination or a refueling stop.

The GCI lodge is made of logs and sits on a lake, and photos show a stately main lodge room with a large imposing stone fireplace, a leather sofa and a mounted caribou head on the wall.

Fergus said the plane was flying by visual flight rules, and was not required to file a flight plan.

Stevens and O'Keefe are longtime fishing buddies and the former senator had been planning a fishing trip near Dillingham, longtime friend William Canfield said. The flights at Dillingham are often perilous through the mountains, even in good weather.

Hayes said the Guard was called to the area about 20 miles north of Dillingham around 7 p.m. Monday after a passing aircraft saw the downed plane. But severe weather has hampered search and rescue efforts.

The National Weather Service reported rain and fog, with low clouds and limited visibility early Tuesday. Conditions ranged from visibility of about 10 miles reported at Dillingham shortly before 7 p.m. Monday to 3 miles, with rain and fog later.

At least two crash victims were treated Tuesday morning by military rescuers, Guard spokeswoman Kalei Brooks Rupp said. She said a team of Good Samaritans hiked into the crash site Monday night and provided medical aid until rescuers arrived.

Lawmakers and residents were awaiting news of Stevens' fate. The moderate Republican was appointed to the Senate in 1968 and served longer than any other Republican in history. He was beloved as a tireless advocate for Alaska's economic interests.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, asked Alaskans to join her in prayer for all those aboard the aircraft and their families, as did Sen. Mark Begich, D-Alaska. He called the plane crash tragic.

Stevens was one of two survivors in a 1978 plane crash at Anchorage International Airport that killed his wife, Ann, and several others. He remarried several years after the crash — he and his second wife, Catherine, have a daughter, Lily.

Over the years, Stevens directed billions of dollars to Alaska.

But one of his projects — infamously known as the "Bridge to Nowhere" — became a symbol of pork-barrel spending in Congress and a target of taxpayer groups who challenged a $450 million appropriation for bridge construction in Ketchikan.

Stevens' standing in Alaska was toppled by corruption allegations and a federal trial in 2008. He was convicted of all seven counts — and narrowly lost his Senate seat to Begich in the election the following week.

But five months after the election, Attorney General Eric Holder sought to dismiss the indictment against Stevens and not proceed with a new trial because of prosecutorial misconduct by federal prosecutors.

O'Keefe, 54, was NASA administrator for three tumultuous years. He was deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget when President George W. Bush asked him in late 2001 to head NASA and help bring soaring space station costs under control.

But budget-cutting became secondary when the shuttle Columbia broke apart during re-entry in 2003.

O'Keefe's most controversial action at NASA was when he decided to cancel one last repair mission by astronauts to the Hubble Space Telescope. He said the mission was too risky. His successor overturned the decision. The Hubble mission was carried out last year.

O'Keefe left NASA in 2005 to become chancellor of Louisiana State University. He is now the CEO of defense contractor EADS North America and oversees the bid for the hotly contested Air Force refueling jet contract.

The company said O'Keefe was a passenger on the plane. The company said it had no further information about O'Keefe's status.

The contract competition, which pits EADS against rival plane maker Boeing Co., is for a piece of what could eventually be $100 billion worth of work replacing the military's fleet of aging tankers.

http://www.timesdispatch.com/

And just think the federal government promises us that they can handle health care without error.

EAST QUOGUE, N.Y. (CBS 2/WCBS 880) – She was declared dead – but she’s as alive as you and I.
Carol Combes is the official historian for the village of East Quogue, Long Island. She cares for headstones and writes local obituaries.

In June, she was aghast to learn that she was dead. In fact, she had been declared dead for more than a month.

“I’m on the computer and am in the Social Security death index, and I’m scanning down and all of the sudden, whoa!” she said. “There’s my name, Carol Combes, where I was born, when I died.”

Combes was quickly cut off from bank accounts, medicare and more.

Ancestry Web sites even publicly listed her presumably ‘dearly departed’ Social Security number – that was still active.

“Every account I had was frozen, no matter where it was at,” she said. “I was left with just pocket change.”

Since then she and her husband Rich have collected hundreds of documents, made endless trips to social security officers, and spent hours on the phone with government workers who finally solved the riddle.

They traced the error to a clerk in Alabama typing in the wrong nine digit number.

A spokesman for Social Security says Combes’ record has been corrected. They’ve since apologized, but Combes thinks it’s something that could’ve easily been avoided.

“To the Social Security Administration, you’re nothing but a number,” Combes said. “And when that number goes in, they should research it a little better.”

Even so, and despite being stuck swimming upstream against the government, Combes, along with family and friends, are finding humor in it all.

"I’m glad you’re alive,” said Richard Combes to his wife. “I’m glad I didn’t miss your funeral.”

Carol also gets a good laugh out of it.

“They say to me, ‘you look pretty good for dead’,” she said.

The Social Security Administration tells CBS 2 that they will continue to monitor Carol’s situation because the IRS, VA Hospital and banks may be slow in getting the correction.

Some of Carol’s assets remain frozen.

www.cbslocal.com

U. of Del. Alum Among 64 Killed in Uganda Blasts

Del. (AP)- A California-based aid group says its worker who was killed in the Uganda explosions had attended the University of Delaware.

Invisible Children of San Diego that helps child soldiers, identified the dead American as Nate Henn, who was killed on the rugby field. The group says Henn studied psychology at the University of Delaware, where he also played rugby.

Jason Vanterpool, who played rugby with Henn, says Henn got along with everyone and was always smiling. He says Henn only played the sport for about a semester and a half due to an injury.

Henn was among at least 64 people killed when explosions tore through crowds watching the World Cup final at a rugby club and an Ethiopian restaurant. Police feared an al-Qaida-linked Somali militant group was behind the attacks.

www.wboc.com

Duck Boat Capsizes In Philadelphia- Two Missing

(AP)Searchers plied the murky waters of the Delaware River early Thursday for two passengers missing from an amphibious sightseeing boat that was struck by a barge, flipped over and sank.

The 37 people aboard the six-wheeled duck boat were tossed overboard when the tugboat-pushed barge hit it after it had been adrift for a few minutes with its engine stalled, police said. Most were plucked from the river by other vessels in a frantic rescue operation that happened in full view of Penn's Landing, just south of the Ben Franklin Bridge.

The duck boat, which can travel seamlessly on land and water, had driven into the river Wednesday afternoon and suffered a mechanical problem and a small fire, officials said. It was struck about 10 minutes later by a barge used to transport sludge and sank to the bottom of the river.

The Coast Guard said it would search through the night for a 16-year-old girl and a 20-year-old man believed to have been aboard the duck boat. Senior Chief Bud Holden said Thursday that passenger interviews indicate the missing were members of a Hungarian tour group.

"Hope is fading, but we're not giving up hope completely," Coast Guard Capt. Todd Gatlin said Wednesday night.

Ten people were taken to a hospital; two declined treatment, and the other eight were treated and released, Hahnemann University Hospital spokeswoman Coleen Cannon said.

The National Transportation Safety Board said it planned to try to obtain any radio recordings, any possible mayday calls, photographs from witnesses or people aboard and other evidence as its investigators remain in Philadelphia over the next several days.

NTSB member Robert Sumwalt said investigators would try to figure out why the vessels collided and "how conspicuous would that duck have been" to the tugboat pushing the 250-foot-long barge. NTSB officials also hoped to conduct witness interviews, he said.

Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey said divers found the duck boat in water about 50 feet deep. Crews would not attempt to recover it until Thursday at the earliest, police spokesman Lt. Frank Vanore said.

There were 35 passengers and two crew members aboard the boat, Holden said. Coast Guard boats assisted by police and fire crews worked to rescue people from the water, he said. A spokeswoman for the duck boat company, Ride the Ducks, said 39 people were aboard, and the reason for the discrepancy was unclear.

One passenger, Kevin Grace, 50, of St. Louis, said he had less than a minute to get a lifejacket on his 9-year-old daughter before the barge hit.

"We had 45 seconds to try to get the life jackets on our kids," he told The Philadelphia Inquirer newspaper. "Everyone panicked, rushing to the front of the boat."

Bystanders along the waterfront screamed as the barge hit the boat, said a security guard who was patrolling the area.

"I whirled around as the barge began to run over the duck boat," said Larry Waxmunski, a guard for the Delaware River Waterfront Corp. "After the barge hit it — it almost looked like slow motion — the duck boat began to turn over."

Television footage showed at least five people being pulled from the water wearing life vests in an area of the river near the Old City neighborhood, popular with tourists. Helicopter footage showed people in life vests being helped from boats onto a dock and at least one person on a gurney.

Terri Ronna, 45, of Oakland, N.J., said she was on a ferry going from Camden, N.J., across the river to Philadelphia when the captain announced that there was someone overboard from another ship and that they were going to rescue him.

"We were not even halfway over when they said there was somebody overboard and we were going to get them," Ronna said. "There were people all over; we could see all these orange life vests."

The passengers who were treated for minor injuries and released from the hospital were three teenagers, three younger children and two adults, Cannon said.

One crew member from the duck boat was rescued by the ferry that the Delaware River Port Authority was operating on its scheduled route between Philadelphia and Camden, authority spokesman Ed Kasuba said.

Officials said the barge was owned by the city and being directed by a tugboat owned by K-Sea Transportation Partners, of East Brunswick, N.J.

The city Water Department uses the barge to transport sludge from a sewage plant in northeast Philadelphia to a recycling plant downriver, mayoral spokeswoman Maura Kennedy said. The city has a contract with K-Sea, which operates the tugboat that pulled the unmanned and unpowered barge.

Ride the Ducks also operates tours in San Francisco, Seattle, Atlanta, Newport, R.I., and Branson, Mo. The company said in a statement on its website that it was suspending its Philadelphia operations.

"Our thoughts and prayers are with our Philadelphia guests, crew members and their families," the statement said.

Holden, of the Coast Guard, said the duck boats are inspected annually, but he did not know when the boat involved in Wednesday's crash was last inspected.

Another Coast Guard spokesman, Thomas Peck, said neither craft was in a wrong lane.

Some of the duck boats are amphibious military personnel carriers dating to World War II that have been restored and reconditioned. Known by their original military acronym as DUKWs, they were first introduced in the tourism market in 1946 in the Wisconsin Dells, where about 120 of the vessels now operate.

As of 2000, there were more than 250 refurbished amphibious vehicles in service nationwide, the NTSB said.

www.npr.org

The Word "BOMB" Is NOT A Joke In Any Airport

A Virginia woman is jailed in Charlotte and facing federal charges after allegedly telling Charlotte/Douglas International Airport screeners she was carrying a bomb Wednesday night.

Federal officials say the incident forced the evacuation of passengers and staff from one part of the airport and delayed the departure of at least one flight.

Danielle Shanese Smith, 25, of Virginia Beach, has been charged by federal authorities with conveying false and misleading information. She also faces local charges of disorderly conduct.

The incident happened shortly before 7 p.m. Wednesday, when Smith and a male friend approached Checkpoint B, according to a federal suit filed Thursday. Air marshals say Smith was planning to board US Airways Flight 930 to Norfolk.

Police said the officer at the security checkpoint detected “three anomalies or images” on Smith’s body as she went through the body scanning machine. A second officer was called to examine Smith again, police said.

When the officer asked Smith if she had anything in her pockets, Morneault said, the woman responded, “I have a bomb.” Smith repeated that statement, adding an expletive, when she was asked the question a second time, federal officials say.

A supervising officer was called to the scene and asked Smith if she had anything in her pockets.

According to police, Smith responded “a bomb, cuz I am a (expletive) terrorist.”

Police said Smith had what was described as “an intense stare” and “a non-joking demeanor.”

At that point, airport police shut down the checkpoint and evacuated passengers and staff from the Checkpoint B area. Smith was arrested, and police did not find any type of explosive on her.

Police said Smith’s luggage was removed from the jet and kept in Charlotte. The flight left about 20 minutes late, authorities say.

The charges against Smith carry a maximum penalty of five years in prison.

www.charlotteobserver.com

No More Larry King?

NEW YORK -- Larry King, who has interviewed statesmen and stars from a prime-time perch at CNN for 25 years but has seen his ratings sag recently, said Tuesday that he will step down this fall from his nightly show.

"It's time to hang up my nightly suspenders," King said in a message sent to fans via Twitter.

King said he will do occasional specials for CNN. He recently reached his 25-year anniversary and takes pride in a Guinness Book of World Records citation for hosting the longest-running show on the same network in the same time slot.

The long-time radio host was a pioneer in cable television, his desk considered a valued spot to sit for anyone interested in talking to the nation. King's interview style was plain-spoken and critics would suggest occasionally ill-prepared, but he was good at making his guests feel comfortable and ready to talk.

King said he felt no pressure from CNN to leave. He said he began thinking about stepping down as his 25th anniversary week ended earlier this month, on the airplane home after interviewing basketball star LeBron James. During that week, he also spoke to Bill Gates, President Barack Obama and Lady Gaga -- an apt example of the mix that he always sought on his show.

"I said, `I can't top this,"' King said in an interview Tuesday.

"I'm tired of the nightly grind," he said. "I do want to do other things but I want to stay at CNN in some way ... There's a case of great mixed emotions."

King told his staff during a conference call Tuesday that he called "one of the saddest 10 minutes of my life."

As cable news audiences gravitated toward politically pointed shows and newsmakers found many more outlets for interviews, King slipped behind Fox News Channel's Sean Hannity and MSNBC's Rachel Maddow in the ratings. During his interview with Lady Gaga, the 76-year-old broadcast veteran had people wondering if he was really connecting with a pop star a half century his junior.

He's conducted an estimated 50,000 interviews during a 53-year broadcasting career.

He said he always tried to ask short questions, never come in with an agenda and "I left my ego at the door."

"I never learned a thing while I was talking," he said. "That would be my motto."

CNN is in the midst of remaking its prime-time lineup and last week announced that former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer and conservative columnist Kathleen Parker would co-host an 8 p.m. EDT show on politics and current events.

CNN executives often have said that when "Larry King Live" ends, it won't necessarily be replaced by a similar show. Recent published reports have suggested that "America's Got Talent" judge Piers Morgan could be a candidate for a show in that time slot. CBS' Katie Couric has been considered a potential successor, although that talk has cooled lately.

King said if it was up to him, Ryan Seacrest would be the best choice to fill his shoes.

He dismissed a series of stories this spring questioning his future and speculating about possible successors.

"You can't worry about things you can't control," he said. "I can't control if a newspaper is going to speculate about something or if a blog is going to speculate ... If I let it get me, I'll go nuts. So what I try to do, and I'm not being morbid, I just try to do the best show I can. If it works, it works."

King said he was able to see the baseball all-star games of his sons this weekend. If it was during the week, he'd miss them.

"I'm never going to see these again," he said. "They're not going to repeat themselves. They're 11 and 10. They're not going to be 11 and 10 again."

www.msnnews.com

NO Anti Terrorism Training Center To Be Built On The Eastern Shore

The federal government has abandoned plans to build an anti-terrorism training center on the Eastern Shore, a project that attracted determined opposition from local residents and conservationists.

Already running behind schedule, the $100 million-plus security facility — which was to have included test tracks for evasive driving manuevers, shooting ranges, a bomb explosion pit and a mock urban neighborhood for counter-terrorist drills — faced the prospect of additional delays and an approval process that could have taken years.

"After further analysis," 2,000 acres of farmland in Queen Anne's County "will no longer be considered" for the State Department's diplomatic security facility, the head of the government's real-estate arm wrote in a letter Monday to Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski, an early supporter of the plan.

General Services Administrator Martha Johnson said preliminary environmental studies "showed that, among other potential concerns, there would be a significant change in land use and considerable noise and traffic impacts."

Those objections, and others, were raised at the outset by critics of the project. It was to have been built in Ruthsburg, a quiet rural crossroads about 30 miles from Annapolis and half an hour from the eastern end of the Bay Bridge.

In the letter, Johnson singled out the "input" of Queen Anne's County citizens during a six-month review process and said she was "confident it led to the proper conclusion."

No new site — or timeline for selecting one — has been announced. Mikulski's office said she still wants it built in Maryland and has spoken with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton about considering other locations in the state. Speculation about possible alternate sites includes Aberdeen Proving Ground in Harforn O'Malley.

In a statement, Kratovil expressed disappointment that the decision to pull the plug on the security center meant his district had "lost out on this economic opportunity."

Opponents say the facility should be built on existing federal property in the capital region.

But federal officials settled on a collection of privately owned grain fields across from Tuckahoe State Park as the preferred site. As recently as January, top Washington officials expressed confidence that they would begin acquiring land for the Foreign Affairs Security Training Center within six months.

It soon became clear that those expectations were unrealistic. Members of the Queen Anne's County Commission reversed course in the face of citizen opposition and dropped their support for the campus-like facility.

"Some of us felt a little bamboozled," said Eric Wargotz, a county commissioner and Republican Senate candidate against Mikulski, who was among those who switched sides after having worked to attract the federal facility.

"Jobs are important," he said. "But it was the wrong place for this project."

Mikulski met privately in Ruthsburg Monday with about 15 local critics of the project to inform them personally about the decision. In a prepared statement, she said she had "fought hard for this process to work and for the voices of the residents of Queen Anne's County to be heard."

Late last year, she hailed selection of the site as "good news for three reasons: jobs, jobs and more jobs for Maryland." But after bureaucrats from Washington bungled an initial Queen Anne's public hearing in January, the senator condemned their performance as an "unmitigated disaster."

Kratovil and others also backed away as the controversy threatened to become an election-year issue.

Republican senators, eager to target the issue of budget deficits, recently singled out the Ruthsburg project as an example of politically motivated pork-barrel spending and sought unsuccessfully to remove the funding from the stimulus program.

The announcement that the Shore location had been dropped came 10 days after a federal judge ordered the government to expedite processing of a demand by project opponents for release of internal documents about how the site was chosen.

Among the requested documents are communications between key decision-makers in the executive branch and three Maryland lawmakers, Mikulski, Kratovil and Rep. Steny Hoyer, the number two official in the House.

It was not immediately clear whether the decision to pull the plug on the Ruthsburg site would alter the requirement for a quick release of documents about the selection process.

"I think there is a reason that the government has continued to stonewall us on our requests. And I think there is a reason that, even after we filed a lawsuit, there are obviously things they don't want to disclose," said Jay Falstad of the Queen Anne's Conservation Association, which successfully sued the government over the information.

"We have every expectation that those documents will still be produced," he said. "We want to see how Ruthsburg came to be the preferred location."

Federal officials say they searched throughout a 150-mile radius of Washington for a suitable site before settling on Ruthsburg. Officials assured local residents that they would protect the sensitive environment of the Eastern Shore in building the facility.

But in March, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency — which had been excluded from a formal review of the proposal — warned that it "may adversely affect" the Chesapeake Bay environment, including wetlands and, posssibly, endangered species.

It urged the State Department and GSA to conduct a more thorough study that would have required a lengthier review, increasing the chances that the project might never be built there.

www.baltimoresun.com

Supreme Court Rules On Guns Rights Case

Monday June 28, 2010

Today the Supreme Court ruled on McDonald vs. Chicago. It's a case that dealt with Chicago's handgun ban, and whether Second Amendment Rights were being violated.

The court ruled in favor of gun owner rights, ordering a federal appeals court to reconsider the nearly 30-year ban.

It's a ruling that could impact gun laws in almost every state.

"In my opinion, self-defense in America has been validated today," said Lead Plaintiff Otis McDonald.

In a 5 to 4 vote, the Supreme Court settled McDonald vs. Chicago, ruling that it is unconstitutional for state and local governments to restrict individual gun rights.

It's an issue that has been up for national debate since the Heller vs. The District of Columbia Case, which dealt only on a federal level, and was settled 2 years ago.

"We think this is a monumental day," said Wayne LaPierre of the NRA. "It is vindication for the great majority of Americans all across the land that have always believed this was an individual right worth defending."

"Bottom line after this decision, you're gonna see a lot more lawsuits because now any criminal defendant that has a gun charge can raise a second amendment issue," disagreed Paul Helmke with the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

The ruling recognizes an individuals right to bear arms, and Senator Jon Tester has been a leading lawmaker working in favor of today's ruling. Tester, along with Senator Hutchison from Texas, presented a "59-page friend of the court brief" to the Supreme Court last October.

"This is a victory for law-abiding citizens across America," said Tester. "It ensures that folks' second amendment rights are protected regardless of where they live."

While Montana is already home to what many would call favorable gun-right laws, Great Falls gun dealer Kevin Lake is glad to see the case settled.

"I''m very excited to see things go this way," said Lake. "I think its something we've needed for a long time. It is just now that they're finally basically putting it into law. The federal government is finally coming down and saying okay this is an individual right, you can do this, you can own a firearm."

And while gun bans,like the one currently in place in Chicago, are expected to be reversed in the near future, the ruling sends a message that the same gun rights apply to the city as they do in rural states.

"There are a lot of places in Montana, where if you call 911, you maybe an hour or 45 minutes from any help at all," said Lake.

The Supreme Court split down party lines, with the four liberal justices opposing the ruling.

Chief Justice John Roberts voted with the majority.

www.kfbb.com

Helen Thomas, Vetenan Reporter, Retires

Veteran White House reporter Helen Thomas is retiring in the wake of controversial comments she made about Israel.

Hearst News Service, for which Thomas is a columnist, reported her retirement announcement Monday.

Her retirement is effective immediately. She began covering the White House in 1960.

Thomas has apologized for the comments, which were captured on video by an interviewer for the website “RabbiLIVE.com.”

On the May 27 video, Thomas says Israelis should "get the hell out of Palestine," suggesting they go to Germany, Poland or the U.S.

Those remarks drew sharp criticism from the Obama administration earlier Monday, as well as the cancellation of a high school graduation speech she was to deliver.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs was asked at his daily briefing with reporters about President Barack Obama's reaction to Thomas' remarks. Gibbs called them "offensive and reprehensible."

"She should and has apologized," Gibbs said. "Because obviously those remarks do not reflect certainly the opinion of most of the people here and certainly not of the administration."

Thomas had been scheduled to speak at the June 14 graduation of Walt Whitman High School in the Washington suburb of Bethesda, Md., but Principal Alan Goodwin wrote in a Sunday e-mail to students and parents that she was being replaced.

"Graduation celebrations are not the venue for divisiveness," Goodwin wrote.

She added: "They do not reflect my heart-felt belief that peace will come to the Middle East only when all parties recognize the need for mutual respect and tolerance. May that day come soon."

The national director of the Anti-Defamation League, Abraham H. Foxman, said Sunday that Thomas' apology didn't go far enough.

"Her suggestion that Israelis should go back to Poland and Germany is bigoted and shows a profound ignorance of history," Foxman said in a statement. "We believe Thomas needs to make a more forceful and sincere apology for the pain her remarks have caused."

Thomas, 89, began her long career with the wire service United Press International in 1943, and started covering the White House in 1960, according to a biography posted on her website. She became a columnist for Hearst in 2000.

www.msn.com