NATIONAL BRIEFS

WASHINGTON: Puerto Ricans denied vote

The Supreme Court won't hear an appeal from residents of Puerto Rico seeking to gain a voting representative in Congress. The high court turned away the appeal from Gregorio Igartua and other Puerto Ricans on Monday. Territorial status grants Puerto Ricans U.S. citizenship, but they pay no federal income taxes and cannot vote in presidential elections. Their representative cannot vote in Congress.

MINNESOTA: Charges in assisted suicide

A grand jury has indicted a national right-to-die group and several members for their actions in the 2007 suicide of a suburban Minneapolis woman, prosecutors said Monday. The 17-count indictment charges the medical director of Final Exit Network, Lawrence Egbert of Baltimore, and three others with felony counts of assisting suicide and interference with a death scene, a gross misdemeanor in Minneapolis. It also charged the New Jersey-based group in its corporate capacity. Officials with First Exit Network have said they acted within the law and within their free speech rights when they counseled Doreen Dunn. She was 57 when she committed suicide at her Apple Valley home after a decade of intense, chronic pain following a medical procedure that went wrong. She died of asphyxia from inhaling helium, which Dakota County prosecutor James Backstrom said is the method the group generally recommends.

NEW JERSEY: Newark airport guard arrested

A Nigerian used the identity of the victim in an unsolved New York City murder to hide his status as an illegal immigrant while working undetected for two decades as a security guard and then a security supervisor at Newark Liberty International Airport, authorities said Monday. The arrest Monday of Bimbo Olumuyiwa Oyewole came on the day a federal report found the Transportation Security Administration's handling of security breaches at the airport deficient. Oyewole, 54, worked there, starting in 1992, under the name of Jerry Thomas, who was killed that year. He was arrested, after an anonymous tip, at his home in Elizabeth and faces charges including identity theft.