Veterans take on Swift Boat charges

NEW YORK - A group of veterans who served in Vietnam with Senator John F. Kerry is taking Texas billionaire T. Boone Pickens up on a challenge he issued in November: that he would give $1 million to anyone who could disprove a single charge the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth made against Kerry in a series of damaging advertisements during the 2004 presidential campaign. The veterans say the accusations of the Swift Boat group damaged their reputations and deeply affected their families. They sent Pickens a 12-page letter that they say rebuts not one but several of the accusations. A spokesman for Pickens said the package had not arrived. (New York Times)

HOUSTON - Randy Sylvester Sr., 27, the father of two missing children, has led investigators to their charred remains, police said yesterday. Randy Sylvester Jr., 7, and his sister, Denim, 3, were found in a wooden chest and a suitcase in a wooded area in southeastern Houston, about 5 miles from their home in suburban Pasadena, said a Pasadena police spokesman. (AP)

KEY LARGO - Navy audiologists conducted a hearing test yesterday on a rare beaked whale convalescing at a marine mammal rehabilitation center in the Florida Keys. The 14-foot whale was found Friday in shallow waters behind a home in Islamorada, and doctors were taking blood samples to try to determine why it stranded. (AP)