Thursday News

• Obama faces a night full of history - and challenge

  DENVER - So many Americans thought this moment would never come.

• Bill Clinton gives Obama candidacy his blessing

  DENVER - Bill Clinton bestowed a potent blessing on his would-be successor last night - telling a fervent convention crowd in blunt terms, "Barack Obama is ready to be president of the United States."

• Scientists transform mice cells into insulin cells

  Using a kind of biological alchemy, Harvard University researchers have turned one type of cell found in the pancreas of mice into the variety that secretes the hormone insulin.

• Biden nominated as Democratic VP nominee

  DENVER - Joe Biden was nominated for vice president last night and declared that the challenges America faces require "more than a good soldier" in the White House, hailing Barack Obama as a wise leader who can deliver the change the nation needs.

• Obama is first African-American presidential nominee

  DENVER - In a watershed moment that drew tears of amazement and joy on the convention floor, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama secured a place in history last night, becoming the first African-American presidential nominee of a major party.

• Obama is first African-American presidential nominee

  DENVER - In a watershed moment that drew tears of amazement and joy on the convention floor, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama secured a place in history last night, becoming the first African-American presidential nominee of a major party.

• Targeting McCain's "Keating 5" history

  DENVER

• West Nile virus kills Carle Place man, 75

  The West Nile virus killed a 75-year-old Carle Place man and is likely responsible for the death of an 80-year-old New Hyde Park woman, Nassau Health Commissioner Maria Torroella Carney said yesterday.

• Philomena Gotti, matriarch of crime family, dies

  Philomena Gotti, the obscure matriarch of what became the country's best-known organized crime family, died of natural causes late Tuesday in her Valley Stream home, her relatives said yesterday.

• McCain VP choice remains a mystery

  DENVER - John McCain's potential running mates were in what amounted to a high-stakes waiting game yesterday as the Republican presidential nominee-in-waiting prepared to announce his running mate in the coming days.

• Mississippi raid exposes tensions over illegal workers

  LAUREL, Miss. - Union bosses in this region of rural Mississippi have long grumbled that the largest factories hire illegal immigrants, and that the immigrants were starting to get more overtime and supervisory positions.

• Quogue mayor indicted on securities fraud

  The mayor of the upscale East End village of Quogue was indicted yesterday on charges of illegally earning at least $1.3 million for his investment firm through securities fraud and impeding a federal investigation by altering firm documents.

• Answered prayers came in $3 million jackpot donation

  It was an unpleasant announcement for Pastor Bertrand Crabbe to make to his congregation at True North Community Church in Port Jefferson Station. The group had outgrown its home on Terryville Road and would soon have to take up a nomadic existence for the foreseeable future - holding services out of rented ballrooms or school gyms.

• Some rape charges against LI fashion designer dropped

  Los Angeles prosecutors yesterday dismissed more than half the charges against Long Island-based fashion designer Anand Jon, an accused serial rapist who prosecutors say preyed upon aspiring models.

• Money isn't all that's 'green' at U.S. Open

  Truly eco-conscious tennis fans will probably ride bikes to the U.S. Open, sip water from reusable bottles and hang on to their programs until recycling day rolls around.

• WORLD & NATION UPDATE: AT HOME

  Congress and the Bush administration headed for a pre-election showdown over the issue of executive privilege yesterday, with House Democrats scheduling a hearing Sept. 11 that would put former White House counsel Harriet E. Miers under oath and the Justice Department mapping a last-ditch court appeal. Justice lawyers are seeking to block a ruling by U.S. District Judge John D. Bates that forces the White House to cooperate with a congressional investigation into the firing of nine U.S. attorneys in 2006.

• Island Trees superintendent to address lead risk

  Several parents with children in the Island Trees school district said yesterday they are concerned about reports of possible lead contamination in the Levittown high school and plan to attend tonight's school board meeting to hear what the superintendent says about the potential for health risks.

• Nassau cops seek "Bling Bandit" bank robber

  Polite. Loquacious. Relaxed. Blingy.

• League of Conservation Voters exec quits in protest

  The state League of Conservation Voters vice chairman John Cameron has resigned in protest after the environmental group voted to dump $175,000 into one state Senate race to help Brookhaven's Democratic supervisor, Brian Foley, unseat 32-year GOP state Sen. Caesar Trunzo.

• "Suge" Knight jailed on assault, drug charges

  Rap music mogul Marion "Suge" Knight was jailed yesterday on assault and drug charges after he was accused of beating his girlfriend while brandishing a knife, Las Vegas police said.

• Long Island vessel to get award for rescue at sea

  Commercial fisherman Anthony Joseph and his crew had just cast the nets from their 80-foot steel trawler for a night of scalloping off Jones Beach when Joseph saw what looked like a distress flare in the distance.

• GOP puts McCain campaign above party's pet issues

  MINNEAPOLIS - Republicans are putting John McCain's campaign priorities above some of their pet issues, including drilling for oil in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and denying citizenship to the U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants.

• Roosevelt landlord cited after tenant attacked

  Three weeks after a man was attacked at a single-family house in Roosevelt used by Nassau County to house homeless men, Hempstead building inspectors cited the landlord for multiple violations, including using the first floor as a church and using bedrooms smaller than the law permits.

• DNC NOTES

  New York Sen. Charles Schumer told Democrats at their national convention last night that it is not enough to elect Barack Obama president this year - they also must elect enough new Democrats to help him. Schumer spoke at the convention in his role as the leader of the Senate Democrats' campaign effort. The Democrats hold a slim majority in the U.S. Senate and hope to pick up at least a few more seats this election - maybe even enough to hold a 60-seat filibuster-proof majority. Obama cannot do it alone, Schumer said. "Without a strong Democratic majority in the Senate," Schumer said, "his ambitious agenda will be thwarted by the defenders of the status quo whose goals can be boiled down to a single word: no."

• WORLD & NATION UPDATE: ABROAD

  The murder case was supposed to be simple: A jobless man accused of killing six police officers in a rare stabbing rampage in China's largest city. But the public surprised authorities, sympathizing with Yang Jia, 28, despite the violent attack and asking whether he was driven to it by police abuse of power. A state media report said Yang tried but failed to sue Shanghai police for psychological damage he claimed to have suffered during an interrogation last year. Several newspapers have hinted that Yang was wronged and demanded a fair trial. The trial had been delayed until the Olympics were over. The verdict, reached Tuesday, hasn't been announced, but a death sentence is likely. The attack came a month before the Olympics. Yang, who is from Beijing, reportedly told police he was seeking revenge after officers interrogated him last year for riding an unlicensed bicycle.

• Western leaders warn Russia to change course in Georgia

  TBILISI, Georgia - Western leaders warned Russia yesterday to "change course," hoping to keep a conflict that already threatens a key nuclear pact and could even raise U.S. chicken prices from blossoming into a new Cold War.

• Arctic ice shrinks to second-lowest level ever

  Arctic sea ice, which melts partly during each polar summer, has shrunk more this year than in any on record except for 2007, the National Snow and Ice Data Center has found.

• ACROSS PARTY LINES: D'Amato, Biden are friends first

  Alfonse D'Amato is one of John McCain's top surrogates in New York, but last night the former New York GOP senator was rooting for Joe Biden to give a rousing speech.

• Central Islip nurse takes aid to needy of the world

  Muriel Gordon looked at the supplies stacked high on her driveway yesterday, then at the interior of the 18-wheeler that was fast filling up.

• Dowling College poll: Long Island vote 'up for grabs'

  Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama has a narrow 42 to 38 percent lead over John McCain across Long Island in an inaugural Dowling College poll, but nearly 21 percent are undecided and a third could still be swayed.

• Hazel Harris, Hempstead activist, dead at 91

  Hazel Harris, who helped lead the effort in the 1960s to get the Hempstead school district to hire African-American teachers, died last week at her home in Holly Springs, N.C., family members said. She was 91.

• Judge: Suffolk not responsible for erosion

  A U.S. District Court judge in Brooklyn has ruled that Suffolk County is not to blame for erosion that has been eating away at Southampton's tony South Fork beaches, a ruling that officials say could save taxpayers as much as $100 million.

• Attacks kill 39 insurgents in Pakistan

  ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Pakistani troops drove off a Taliban attack on a fort and pounded another band of militants holed up in a health center, officials said yesterday as fighting spread to a third area of the tribal belt along the Afghan border.

• Contractor charged with failing to pay employee taxes

  The head of a New Jersey carpentry company was charged yesterday with failing to pay $400,000 in Social Security and other benefit taxes for his employees on Long Island, according to officials.

• THE BUZZ

  MACKENZIE PHILLIPS FACES DRUG CHARGES. Former teen star Mackenzie Phillips was arrested yesterday on suspicion of possessing a controlled substance after she allegedly was found carrying drugs at Los Angeles International Airport, The Associated Press reports. Airport police Sgt. Jim Holcomb said the co-star of the old sitcom "One Day At a Time" was heading to New York when she failed to pass a security screening and a secondary search turned up a small amount of cocaine and heroin in her possession. Phillips, 48, is the daughter of John Phillips, the late leader of the singing group The Mamas and the Papas.

• Najaf, once one of Iraq's hot spots, now a boomtown

  NAJAF, Iraq - The city's first airport is weeks away from opening, but already a bigger one is talked about. Land prices are soaring. Merchants say they don't remember business ever being so good.

• Rudy, Republicans hammer at Obama's experience

  DENVER - Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani appeared a few miles from the convention hall where Barack Obama was to be nominated and cited past statements from Giuliani's twice would-be rival Hillary Rodham Clinton to make his case for Sen. John McCain.

• DNC 2008: THE LI POLS

  Question: "Coming from Hillary Rodham Clinton's home state, what goes through your mind as the first African-American major-party nominee moves ahead into his general- election run?"

• Three years after Katrina, New Orleans may face Gustav

  NEW ORLEANS - On the eve of Hurricane Katrina's third anniversary, a nervous New Orleans watched yesterday as another storm threatened to test everything the city has rebuilt, and officials made plans to evacuate people, pets and hospitals in an attempt to avoid a Katrina-style chaos.

• BEST OF SPIN CYCLE

  11:13 p.m. - You could see how Bill Clinton won the presidency twice and John Kerry lost it once. Clinton was the old pro with the strong moves who could time the cheers with the lines. But in 2004 Kerry gave a nomination speech that even people who voted for him could not sit through. But Kerry this time had strong material: Citing John McCain's reversals on tax cuts, climate change and immigration, he said: "Are you kidding? ... Talk about being for it before you're against it." - Dan Janison

• Lawyer named as new Nassau County public administrator

  A politically connected attorney has been selected as the new $134-000-a-year public administrator of Nassau County, a highly coveted position from which he can appoint lawyers to handle the estates of people who die without leaving a will.

• Garth and Doherty say they're fine together on '90210'

  Jennie Garth and Shannen Doherty say they were nervous about reuniting for the new incarnation of " Beverly Hills, 90210." The actresses feuded on and off the set of the 1990s cultural phenomenon, and Doherty left the series in 1994 following a rocky stretch during which she clashed with the cast and producers and showed up late for work.

• North Korean woman, accused of being spy, arrested

  SEOUL, South Korea - A North Korean woman accused of using "sex as a tool for her spy activity" and plotting to assassinate South Korean intelligence agents with poisoned needles has been arrested, prosecutors said yesterday.

• Queens killing victim's family says suspect confessed

  Even as he was fleeing the city, accused killer Segundo Penafiel was making calls to the family of his slain ex-girlfriend, tearfully confessing, her family said yesterday after learning he had been captured near the Mexican border.

• Syosset woman killed, 3 hurt in East Meadow car crash

  One woman was killed, and one man and two young people were seriously injured in a two-car crash on Merrick Avenue in East Meadow, Nassau police said.

• WAR UPDATE

  Conditions in the western province of Anbar, where a brutal insurgency once ruled, have improved so dramatically that within days the United States is handing over responsibility for security in the Sunni stronghold to Iraq. Troops freed up in Iraq could shift to Afghanistan. "There aren't a whole heck of a lot of bad guys there left to fight," Gen. James T. Conway, the top Marine Corps general, said yesterday. A ceremony marking the Anbar turnover is expected to be held Monday, several U.S. and Iraqi officials said. Each spoke on condition of anonymity because the Iraqi government has not yet announced it. Anbar would be the 10th of Iraq's 18 provinces to be returned to Iraqi government control.

• Five things Obama's speech needs to accomplish

  1 Recognize the historical import of his nomination, with a nod to the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech. Obama is often reluctant to talk about his role as a pioneer but people will want to hear something from him about it tonight.

• Border Patrol has frequent turnover of new agents

  IMPERIAL BEACH, Calif. - Law enforcement officers wanted: must work graveyard shifts alone in remote towns along the Mexican border, put in long hours and perform well in triple-digit temperatures.

• Yuri Nosenko, ex-KGB spy who helped CIA, dead at 81

  WASHINGTON - A KGB spy who switched allegiances at the height of the Cold War and was considered by the CIA as its "most valuable and economical defector" has died.

• HOLIDAY SCHEDULE

  Monday is Labor Day. All federal, state, county and town offices will be closed, as will all banks, courts and financial markets. All post offices in Nassau and Suffolk will be closed, except for the postal store at Roosevelt Field, which will be open from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. There will be no mail delivery except for Express Mail.

• Del Martin, lesbian activist, dead at 87

  SAN FRANCISCO - Pioneering lesbian rights activist Del Martin, who married her lifelong partner in June on the first day that same-sex couples here gained that right, died yesterday. She was 87.

• DNC 2008: THE LI PUBLIC

  Question: What do you think now that an African-American is a major party's presidential nominee?

• Olympian Michael Phelps to host 'Saturday Night Live'

  Butterfly, freestyle, relay - monologue? Michael Phelps is trading the pool for the " Saturday Night Live" stage.

• Shellfishing areas to be closed along North Shore

  New York State Department of Environmental Conservation officials yesterday announced that, starting Saturday, they will close three North Shore shellfishing areas over Labor Day weekend, citing potentially higher levels of contamination due to increased recreational boating activity in the waters.

• LIRR to add trains for Labor Day

  The Long Island Rail Road will run eight additional eastbound trains from Penn Station tomorrow afternoon for people eager to get a jump on the Labor Day weekend.

• TODAY'S HIGHLIGHTS

  Tonight, the first major party acceptance address by an African-American will become a historic moment in American politics. On the 45th anniversary of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have A Dream" speech, Sen. Barack Obama will accept the Democratic party's nomination before 75,000 supporters at the Denver Broncos' football stadium. But to seal the deal, Obama will need to convince skeptical voters that he can go toe-to-toe with Sen. John McCain on foreign policy issues.

• City residents getting HIV at three times national rate

  New data indicate New York City residents are contracting the virus that causes AIDS at three times the national rate.

• New title for Riverhead volunteer

  Vince Tria, the 76-year-old former ombudsman of Riverhead Town, got a new title yesterday, after having his old one terminated last week by the town board.

• Armed robbery at Sayville bank

  A man robbed the Island Federal Credit Union branch in Sayville yesterday and fled with an undisclosed amount of money, Suffolk police said.

• CLARIFICATION

  The dish of potatoes, onions and tinned anchovies mentioned in the A la Carter column in today’s Explore LI, which was printed in advance, is commonly called Janssen’s Temptation. Sylvia Carter’s friend, however, calls the dish by the name printed, Johanssen’s Temptation.

• CORRECTION

  The next dance sponsored by L.I. NAIM Widows and Widowers group in Massapequa will be Sept. 19. The date was incorrect in the Singles Events calendar in Tuesday’s Explore LI.

• THIS DATE IN HISTORY

  1963: 200,000 participated in a Washington rally where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech.