SOUTH

OFFICIAL DEATH TOLL FROM KATRINA INCOMPLETE

NEW ORLEANS – Even as the official toll continues to rise when more bodies are found in once-flooded homes, the real total may never be known. The victims are scattered far and wide, and the connections of their deaths to the storm are not necessarily obvious.

Officially, as of yesterday, the states counted 1,075 deaths in Louisiana, 230 in Mississippi, 14 in Florida, and two each in Georgia and Alabama. But the states have different definitions for storm-related deaths. For example, Louisiana counts evacuee deaths from heart attacks or strokes before October 1 as storm deaths, but Georgia doesn’t.

The Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals is getting copies of evacuees’ death certificates from other states and reviewing them to see which deaths likely were caused or hastened by the August 29 storm.

– Associated Press

MAN APOLOGIZES AFTER FAKE WIKIPEDIA POST

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – A man who posted false information on an online encyclopedia linking a prominent journalist to the Kennedy assassinations says he was playing a trick on a co-worker.

Brian Chase, 38, ended up resigning from his job and apologizing to John Seigenthaler Sr., the former publisher of the Tennessean newspaper and founding editorial director of USA Today.

“I knew from the news that Mr. Seigenthaler was looking for who did it, and I did it, so I needed to let him know in particular that it wasn’t anyone out to get him, that it was done as a joke that went horribly, horribly wrong,” Mr. Chase was quoted as saying in yesterday’s editions of the Tennessean.

– Associated Press

WASHINGTON

FRIST TO RESTRICT ALITO FILIBUSTER

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said Sunday he is prepared to strip Democrats of their ability to filibuster if they try to stall Samuel Alito’s nomination to the Supreme Court.

“The answer is yes,” Dr. Frist said when asked if he would act to change Senate procedures to restrict a Democratic filibuster. “Supreme Court justice nominees deserve an up-or-down vote, and it would be absolutely wrong to deny him that.”

Democrats immediately called Dr. Frist’s words unhelpful and potentially incendiary. They said Senate Democrats are waiting for the Judiciary Committee to act on Judge Alito’s nomination before they decide what they may do.

“Senator Frist has thrown down the gauntlet at a time when the country least needs it,” said Senator Schumer, a Democratic member of the Judiciary Committee, “The American people know that checks and balances are an integral part of our government.”

In recent weeks, Senate Democrats have questioned whether Judge Alito, a federal appeals court judge, has the proper judicial temperament and ideology to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.

– Associated Press

TIME REPORTER: ROVE’S LAWYER KNEW OF CONVERSATION

Months before Karl Rove corrected his statements in the Valerie Plame investigation, his lawyer was told that the president’s top political adviser might have disclosed Ms. Plame’s CIA status to a Time magazine reporter.

Mr. Rove says he had forgotten the conversation he had on July 11, 2003, with Time’s Matt Cooper. But the magazine reported Sunday that in the first half of 2004, as President Bush’s re-election campaign was heating up, Mr. Rove’s lawyer got the word about a possible Rove-Cooper conversation from a second Time reporter, Viveca Novak.

Ms. Novak described her conversation with the lawyer, Robert Luskin, in a first person account released Sunday on Time’s Web site.

Mr. Luskin declined comment. Mark Corallo, a spokesman for Mr. Rove’s legal team, said the deputy White House chief of staff has cooperated fully with prosecutors.

“The integrity of the investigation requires that we not discuss the substance of any communications with the special counsel,” Mr. Corallo said in a statement.

– Associated Press