Nation and world in brief Jan. 3

| The Associated Press

1/2/2009 -

Dems plan cool reception for Blagojevich Senate pick

WASHINGTON — Senate Democratic leaders plan to grant few if any privileges next week to Roland Burris, the man picked by Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich to represent the state in the Senate, even if Burris arrives on Capitol Hill with the proper credentials.

Senate officials involved in the tangle of legal and logistical planning said Friday that a Democrat will object to Burris being duly sworn with the rest of his class and will propose his credentials be reviewed for a period by the Rules Committee.

That would give Burris the status of a senator-elect to the seat vacated by President-elect Barack Obama in the juiciest of several dramas swirling around open Senate seats days before the 111th Congress convenes.

Senate Democrats are slow-walking Burris' appointment because they hope Blagojevich will be removed from office before the Rules Committee completes its investigation. As early as next week, Blagojevich — federal authorities accuse him of offering to sell the appointment to the highest bidder — could become the state's first chief executive to be impeached.

Travolta's 16-year-old son dies in Bahamas

NASSAU, Bahamas — John Travolta's teenage son, Jett, died in the Bahamas after apparently suffering a seizure and hitting his head at his family's vacation home, authorities said Friday.

A house caretaker found Jett, 16, unconscious in a bathroom late Friday morning. He was taken by ambulance to a Freeport hospital, where he was pronounced dead, Police Superintendent Basil Rahming said in a statement.

The teenager had last been seen entering the bathroom on Thursday and had a history of seizures, according to the statement. An autopsy is planned.

Jett apparently hit his head on the bathtub, said a police officer who declined to be named because she was not authorized to speak on the matter.

Jett was the oldest child of Travolta, 54, and his wife, actress Kelly Preston, 46, who also have an 8-year-old daughter, Ella Bleu.

Suicide bombing kills at least 23 in Iraq

BAGHDAD — An explosives-strapped man slipped into a luncheon gathering at a tribal leader's home and blew himself up Friday, killing at least 23 people and wounding dozens.

The attack in Youssifiyah, in the area once known as the Triangle of Death because of its extreme violence, came a day after the United States relinquished the lead on security to Iraqi forces throughout the country. The bloodshed highlighted the challenge that Iraqi police and soldiers face in trying to bring order to a nation gripped by religious, ethnic and political enmity.

Police officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to give information to news media placed the casualty total at 30 dead and 110 wounded. But Iraqi Army Col. Aman Mansour Ibrahim, who was on the scene, said 24 were killed and 38 wounded. The U.S. military said Iraqis were reporting 23 dead and 32 wounded.

Historians battle Wal-Mart over Civil War site

LOCUST GROVE, Va. — Wal-Mart wants to build a Supercenter within a cannonshot of where Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant first fought, a proposal that has preservationists rallying to protect the key Civil War site.

A who's who of historians including filmmaker Ken Burns and Pulitzer Prize winner David McCullough sent a letter last month to H. Lee Scott, president and chief executive officer of Wal-Mart Stores Inc., urging the company to build somewhere farther from the Wilderness Battlefield.

"The Wilderness is an indelible part of our history, its very ground hallowed by the American blood spilled there, and it cannot be moved," said the letter from 253 scholars and others.

Wal-Mart and its supporters point out the 138,000-square-foot store would be behind a bank and a small strip mall, a full mile from the entrance to the site of the 1864 clash that left thousands dead and hastened the war's end.

Local leaders also want the $500,000 in tax revenue they estimate the big box store will generate for rural Orange County, a gradually growing area about 60 miles southwest of Washington.

British couple defies odds with second set of twins

LONDON — A mixed-race British couple has defied the odds — twice — by producing two sets of twins in which one sibling appears to be black and the other white. Dean Durrant's newborn daughter Miya has dark skin like him. Twin sister Leah has fair skin like her blue-eyed, red-haired mother, Alison Spooner.

Their older siblings Lauren and Hayleigh, born in 2001, also have strikingly different skin tones and eye colors.

"There's no easy way to explain it all. I'm still in shock myself," Durrant, 33, told Sky News on Wednesday.

Both sets of twins are fraternal rather than identical, meaning they are the product of two separately fertilized eggs, so it is not unusual they don't look alike. Miya's skin color was more influenced by her father's genes, while Leah takes after her mother.

But scientists say it's rare for a couple to have two sets of twins, and even rarer for them to have such different appearances.

U.S. military deaths in Iraq

As of Friday, at least 4,221 members of the U.S. military had died in the Iraq war since it began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

The figure includes eight military civilians killed in action. At least 3,400 military personnel died as a result of hostile action, according to the military's numbers.

The AP count is the same as the Defense Department's tally, last updated Friday at 8 a.m. MST.

The latest identifications reported by the military:

Army Pvt. Benjamin B. Tollefson, 22, Concord, Calif., died Wednesday in Balad, of wounds suffered from indirect fire in Ghazaliya; assigned to the Special Troops Battalion, 2nd Heavy Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, Fort Riley, Kan.