The nation in brief

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“We wouldn’t want the tainted money to draw a federal match, now would we?”

Democratic state Sen. Pat Steadman of Colorado, the sponsor of a measure to transfer $3.5 million from the state’s marijuana-tax fund to its general fund to seek matching money from the federal government to keep kids off drugs Article, 2A

Oklahoma prepares for double execution

OKLAHOMA CITY - Oklahoma plans to hold its first double execution in nearly 80 years Tuesday, Gov. Mary Fallin said Thursday.

The move comes a day after the state Supreme Court removed one of the final obstacles, ruling late Wednesday that convicted murderers Clayton Lockett and Charles Warner are not entitled to know the source of the drugs that will be used to kill them. The inmates had sought that information through a civil lawsuit.

The Oklahoma Supreme Court also dissolved a stay of execution it had issued earlier in the week in a sharply divided and much criticized 5-4 decision.

Because the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals has exclusive jurisdiction over criminal matters, Fallin and others accused the state’s high court of initially overstepping its civil-only bounds - to the point that some legislators called for impeaching the five justices who had voted to delay the executions.

GOP senators slam Obama on immigration

WASHINGTON - Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and 21 other Republican senators accused President Barack Obama on Thursday of displaying “an astonishing disregard for the Constitution, the rule of law and the rights of American citizens” by considering administrative changes to the nation’s deportations policy.

In a letter to the president, the senators said the changes under consideration would amount to “near complete abandonment of basic immigration enforcement.” The 22 lawmakers who signed the letter included Sen. John Boozman, R-Ark.

The Associated Press reported this week that Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, who is conducting a review ordered by Obama on how to make the administration’s policy on deportations more humane, is weighing limiting removals of illegal aliens who don’t have serious criminal records. Other changes also are possible.

Washington state loses No Child waiver

SEATTLE - Washington state has become the first to lose its federal waiver for requirements of the No Child Left Behind education law as well as control over how about $40 million is spent to improve public school student outcomes, education officials announced Thursday.

State education officials say they received an email from Education Secretary Arne Duncan saying they were losing the waiver because the state did not meet the U.S. Department of Education’s requirement to include statewide student test results in teacher evaluations.

Duncan wrote that he appreciated the state’s effort toward education change, but said they hadn’t done enough to keep the flexibility waiver.

Forty-two other states and Washington, D.C., have been given a waiver from some elements of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 as a stopgap until Congress acts to reauthorize the law.

Washington state has been operating under a conditional waiver for the past two school years, as lawmakers debated changes in state law but could not come to an agreement on teacher evaluations that satisfied the federal government.

Wyoming evacuees back home after blast

OPAL, Wyo. - Residents were allowed to return home Thursday, nearly 22 hours after an explosion at a natural-gas processing plant forced the evacuation of their small southwestern Wyoming town.

Lincoln County spokesman Stephen Malik said that the evacuation order was lifted shortly after 11:30 a.m. Thursday even though a fire was still burning at the plant.

No injuries were reported in the explosion Wednesday in Opal, a town of about 95 people about 100 miles northeast of Salt Lake City. All of Opal was evacuated.

Gas from the plant serves a huge number of customers across the West and as far east as Ohio, but the explosion came between the winter heating and summer cooling seasons, when demand is lower, officials said.

Neither authorities nor Williams Partners LP of Tulsa, which operates the plant, has said what may have caused the explosion. Tom Droege, a Williams spokesman, said the cause would be investigated in cooperation with regulators and local authorities.

Front Section, Pages 4 on 04/25/2014

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