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WORLD & NATION UPDATE: AT HOME

Compiled by news dispatches

May 9, 2008

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A 260-foot-deep sinkhole in Daisetta, Texas, that grew to the length of three football fields over two days seemed to be slowing down yesterday, geologists said. The 900-foot-long sinkhole has swallowed up oil tanks and barrels, tires, telephone poles and several vehicles in the once-booming oil town 60 miles northeast of Houston. Residents watched as large chunks of earth and oil field equipment, trees and vehicles that sat on them tumbled in.

A computer file, "Thai-Luv," seized in Norway and packed with child pornography, had frustrated Interpol for two years. A middle-aged, stocky, bespectacled man does nothing to conceal his identity in the photos as he abuses boys. A "BKK" luggage tag, the Bangkok airport code, indicated he was in Thailand but police had no idea who he was until it appealed to the public. Within 48 hours, that led to a cluttered apartment in Union City, N.J., and an apparent double life. Wayne Nelson Corliss, a comedy writer who played Santa Claus at parties, was arrested Wednesday. Charged with producing child pornography, he could face 10 to 20 years in prison. Corliss, who acted under the name Casey Wayne, was known as a witty man who eschewed 9-to-5 jobs in favor of entertainment gigs.

A frustrated military judge, Peter Brownback, vowed yesterday to suspend the war-crimes trial of a detainee unless the Guantánamo Bay detention center provides a "day by day, hour by hour" record of his confinement. Attorneys for Toronto-born Omar Khadr say logs of interrogations could provide grounds to suppress self-incriminating statements. Khadr is accused of killing a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan.

Veterans Affairs Secretary James Peake took heated questions this week on Capitol Hill about whether his agency was withholding information about veterans and suicide. Disclosure of e-mails during a recent trial had suggested some VA officials were hiding the number of those trying to kill themselves. Peake promised more transparency.