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FLORIDA

Lesbians sue to make their marriage legal in all states

TAMPA - A lesbian couple who married in Massachusetts sued the federal government Tuesday to have their union legally recognized in the rest of the country.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of the Rev. Nancy Wilson and Paula Schoenwether, who married July 2 in Massachusetts. The couple applied for a marriage license in Florida soon afterward and were denied.

It was believed to be the first such lawsuit since gay marriage became legal in Massachusetts in May, said their attorney, Ellis Rubin.

Rubin said the federal Defense of Marriage Act and a Florida law that defines marriage as a union between a man and woman violate his clients' equal-protection rights.

NEW YORK

Truck crashes into picketers, killing two union members

BAY SHORE - A pickup plowed through a group of pickets at a building construction site Tuesday, killing two union members and injuring six others, police said.

The picketers were outside a construction site for an appliance business because they believed there were nonunion members working on the project.

Police found the truck a short time after it struck the pickets at about 8:45 a.m., and the driver was being questioned.

Names of those killed and injured, members of New York Carpenters Local 7, were not immediately released.

NEW YORK

Mother gets 30 years to life

for killing, hiding newborns

CANANDAIGUA - A woman who killed two of her newborns and encased their bodies in concrete was sentenced Tuesday to 30 years to life in prison.

Stacy DeBeer, 31, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder two weeks ago in exchange for two consecutive sentences of 15 years to life in prison - meaning she will serve 30 years before she can seek parole.

''My babies deserved more,'' DeBeer, weeping and shaking, said at her sentencing. ''I will live with this everyday.''

Before dawn May 11, 2003 - Mother's Day and her 29th birthday - DeBeer said she gave birth on her living-room couch, placed the infant girl in a garbage bag and hid the body. She told police she killed another newborn, also a girl, five years earlier.

DeBeer told relatives she was pregnant last year. When a baby failed to materialize, a relative snooping around the basement of DeBeer's home in Farmington found the dead newborn encased in concrete in a plastic pail.

The other child's body was found in a bucket of concrete left in a garden shed at DeBeer's former home in Canadice, another rural town in western New York.

MASSACHUSETTS

Media excluded from boy's trial to 'divorce' his father

CANTON - The media will be barred from a trial on a 14-year-old boy's request to terminate the parental rights of his father, who was convicted of murdering the boy's mother six years ago, a judge ruled Tuesday.

Patrick Holland, the couple's only son, was asleep in an adjoining room when Daniel Holland shot his wife, Liz, eight times. The boy now lives in Sandown, N.H., with his legal guardians.

The Associated Press asked Norfolk County Probate Judge Robert Langlois to open the trial but he said the law clearly forbids it.