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Nation briefs: Hurricane-hit hospital to lay off 3,800

Compiled from news dispatches

November 13, 2008

The University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, which was damaged by Hurricane Ike, said yesterday about 3,800 workers would be laid off because the teaching hospital is running out of money. The university's Board of Regents said the hospital would have no money to operate in about three months. Ike caused nearly $710 million in losses to the hospital when it struck the Texas coast in September and officials have said insurance covered only about $100 million of that.

Congress will not act until 2010 on a bill to limit the heat-trapping gases blamed for global warming despite President-elect Barack Obama's declaration that he will move quickly on climate change, the chairman of the Senate Energy Committee predicted yesterday. Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) said that the economic crisis, the transition to a new administration and the complexity of setting up a market for carbon pollution permits preclude acting in 2009. He spoke at a carbon markets conference in Washington.

A Ku Klux Klan chapter incited violence against minorities with racist speeches and "hate metal" music, an attorney said yesterday at the opening of a civil trial in Brandenburg, Ky. The Southern Poverty Law Center has sued the nation's second-largest Klan outfit on behalf of a Latino teen who was severely beaten in 2006 at a county fair. Two Klansmen were convicted and served two years in prison. The center wants its lawsuit to bankrupt the Imperial Klans of America, law center co-founder Morris Dees said. The lawsuit against the chapter, Grand Wizard Ron Edwards and Klansman Jarred Hensley seeks a "substantial judgment" for the beating of Jordan Gruver.

A 15-year-old girl was charged with fatally shooting another student during an argument yesterday at a Florida high school. Teah Wimberly was charged with first-degree murder and discharging a weapon on school property, Fort Lauderdale Police said. The body of sophomore Amanda Collette, 15, was found on a hallway floor 11 a.m. She was shot while students were changing classes. Wimberly walked to a restaurant where she called police and told them that "she had shot her friend," police said.