USA

Reputed Ku Klux Klan member Edgar Ray Killen on Friday pleaded not guilty to three counts of murder in the 1964 killings of three civil rights workers - a black Mississippian and two white New Yorkers. Killen's name has long been associated with the unresolved case, which was dramatized in the 1988 movie "Mississippi Burning." FBI records and witnesses from a 1960s federal trial in the case indicated that the preacher organized the carloads of Klansmen who followed the workers out of town and waylaid them on the night of the killings. Until last week, the state of Mississippi never brought murder charges against anyone in the case. Killen is the latest elderly suspect charged with crimes committed when Southern blacks had little hope of seeing justice.

Toxic chlorine vapors blamed for killing eight people and sending scores to the hospital for treatment will keep residents out of their homes in Graniteville, S.C., until at least early this week as cleanup crews try to stop gas from leaking out of a wrecked train car. The crash, which occurred last Thursday, spewed a greenish-yellow fog that settled over its victims in their homes. Crews worked around the clock over the weekend to patch a fist-sized hole in the train that had struck a parked train.

A sailor injured aboard a nuclear submarine that ran aground about 350 miles south of Guam died Sunday, the Navy said. Twenty-three other crew members were being treated for injuries. The USS San Francisco was headed back to its home port in Guam after sustaining severe damage on Saturday. The incident is under investigation.

Army Sgt. 1st Class Tracy Perkins was sentenced to six months in military prison and demoted Friday for ordering soldiers to push two Iraqis - one of whom is missing and possibly drowned - into the Tigris River. During a trial at Fort Hood, Texas, Perkins was convicted of of aggravated assault but acquitted of involuntary manslaughter

In northern California's Sierra Nevada mountains and in northern Nevada, winter storm warnings were in effect through Tuesday morning, with as much as 5 feet of new snow possible on top of Saturday's accumulations of up to 4.5 feet. Deep snow also stalled motorists in the San Bernardino Mountains east of Los Angeles, where crews rescued 180 travelers.

Citing Pentagon insiders, Newsweek magazine said Saturday that military officials are debating whether to train Kurdish and Shiite fighters in Iraq as hit squads that would target Sunni insurgents.