briefs

DENVER (MCT) – Opening a new front in their assault on abortion, activists in half a… DENVER (MCT) – Opening a new front in their assault on abortion, activists in half a dozen states are preparing ballot referendums that would grant “personhood” and constitutional rights to embryos from the moment of conception.

The drive is under way in Colorado, where activists have begun gathering signatures for an initiative, and Georgia, where the Legislature will take up the issue when it reconvenes in January. Abortion opponents in Montana, Oregon, Mississippi and Michigan are among those considering similar measures.

The new strategy takes an idea that has been central to the pro-life movement – that human life begins when an egg is fertilized – and makes it the centerpiece of state efforts to overturn women’s legal right to an abortion. If the embryo is declared a person under a state’s constitution, the reasoning goes, the termination of its existence must be considered murder.

It’s not a new way of framing the anti-abortion argument. For more than 25 years, anti-abortion groups have tried to advance the idea that life begins at conception through proposed federal legislation, to no avail. But now, some activists have decided to make the “personhood” issue the rallying point for abortion battles in the states. – Judith Graham and Judy Peres, Chicago Tribune

ST. CHARLES, Mo. (MCT) – The St. Charles County prosecutor said Monday there will be no criminal charges filed in the case of the teenage girl who committed suicide after being bullied on the Internet.

Prosecutor Jack Banas said that based on available evidence, the actions of the people involved in the Internet bullying did not meet the standards required by state laws for either harassment, stalking or endangering the welfare of a child.

Banas announced his decision at a news conference called to discuss the Megan Meier case. Megan, 13, of Dardenne Prairie, Mo., hanged herself last year. Her parents said her suicide was the result of harassment via her MySpace Web page.

Her parents said an adult neighbor created a teenage boy who pretended to be interested in Megan before he began bullying her. The neighbors admitted to police that they created the account.

Megan hanged herself Oct. 16, 2006, shortly after receiving cruel messages on the social networking Web site MySpace. Megan’s parents, Ron and Tina Meier, found out six weeks after Megan’s death that the boy their daughter had been chatting with online never existed.

The boy’s profile, they learned, was the creation of Lori Drew, her daughter and Drew’s employee, Ashley Grills. The Drews and the Meiers live four doors apart in Dardenne Prairie. – Joel Currier, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

WASHINGTON (MCT) – Iran was attempting to build a nuclear weapon but halted the effort in the fall of 2003 and doesn’t appear to have restarted it, the declassified key judgments of a comprehensive new U.S. intelligence report said Monday.

The report said that Iran’s decision to halt its nuclear weapons program suggested that “it is less determined to develop nuclear weapons than we have been judging since 2005. Our assessment that the program probably was halted primarily in response to international pressure suggests that Iran may be more vulnerable to influence on the issue than we judged previously.”

The long-delayed report is a stunning reversal of the U.S. intelligence community’s previous assessment that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons, and it could slow the Bush administration’s drive to tighten U.N. sanctions on Tehran for defying U.N. orders to suspend its uranium enrichment program.

“We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program; we also assess with moderate to high confidence that Tehran at a minimum is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons,” the key judgments of the National Intelligence Estimate titled “Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities” said. – Jonathan S. Landay, McClatchy Newspapers