Lawmaker's death ruled an accident

COLUMBUS - US Representative Paul Gillmor, who was found dead in his apartment in suburban Washington this week, died of blunt head and neck trauma consistent with a fall down stairs, according to a medical examiner's report released yesterday. The fall was certified as an accident, said Lucy Caldwell, a spokeswoman for the Virginia Department of Health. (AP)

ST. FRANCISVILLE - The owners of a nursing home where 35 patients died after Hurricane Katrina were acquitted yesterday of negligent homicide and cruelty charges for not evacuating the facility as the storm approached. The jury took about four hours to acquit Sal and Mabel Mangano, the husband-and-wife owners of St. Rita's Nursing Home in St. Bernard Parish, just outside of New Orleans. The couple were the only people to face criminal charges stemming directly from Hurricane Katrina. (AP)

The State Department said yesterday that it has worked through a massive backlog in passport applications and that processing times are back to normal after months of major delays that disrupted summer travel plans for thousands of Americans. The department said steps taken to deal with the crisis had brought the waiting period for a standard application back to six to eight weeks and three weeks for expedited service. At one point during the summer, the processing time had stretched to more than three months for a standard application. (AP)

Only a third of the world's polar bears may be left within 50 years because of thinning sea ice from global warming in the Arctic, the US Geological Survey said yesterday. The agency projects that polar bears during that time also will lose 42 percent of the Arctic range they need to live in during summer in the Polar Basin when they need to hunt and breed. Mark Myers, the USGS director, said the findings from US and Canadian scientists are based on six months of new studies. (AP)