NATIONAL BRIEFS

WASHINGTON: 4 agents to fight dismissals

Four Secret Service employees have decided to fight their dismissals for inappropriate conduct in Colombia last month, a development that could unravel what has been a swift resolution to an embarrassing scandal over hiring of prostitutes. The agents argue that the agency is making them scapegoats for behavior long tolerated in the Secret Service, a charge Director Mark Sullivan may have to address before a Senate committee Wednesday. His prepared testimony shows he plans to say there was no breach of operational security.

2 more states for Romney

Mitt Romney swept the Kentucky and Arkansas Republican presidential primaries Tuesday, inching closer to the GOP nomination. He won all 42 delegates at stake in Kentucky and at least 21 of the 33 delegates in Arkansas. Romney is just 89 shy of the 1,144 delegates needed to win nomination. He should hit that next week in the Texas primary.

OREGON: Five dead in 'murder-suicide'

A mother and her three children were found dead in a burned house Tuesday in the northwest, and the father was found dead later in a car. Police said it appeared to be a murder-suicide. Salem firefighters found the woman and children when they went to a house on fire in a working-class neighborhood. About five hours later, the father was found dead in a vehicle about 75 miles south of Salem, in Cottage Grove. Salem is about 50 miles south of Portland.

ARIZONA: 40 years for supremacist

A white supremacist is likely to spend the rest of his life behind bars after a judge sentenced him Tuesday to 40 years in prison for a 2004 bombing that wounded a black city official. Jurors convicted Dennis Mahon, 61, in February of three charges stemming from a package bomb that injured Don Logan, Scottsdale's diversity director then, and a secretary. U.S. District Judge David Campbell said he believed the bombing was meant to promote an agenda of hate and racism. He called it an "act of domestic terrorism."