Oklahoma

Intent on dismantling affirmative action, activists in five states have launched a coordinated drive to cut off tax dollars for programs that offer preferential treatment based on race or gender. The campaign aims to put affirmative action bans on the November ballot in Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Nebraska and Oklahoma. The effort is being organized by California consultant Ward Connerly, who has successfully promoted similar measures in California, Michigan and Washington.

The state House speaker resigned his post on Monday after a series of embarrassing revelations, including not filing state personal income-tax returns and being involved in questionable fundraising. Republican Lance Cargill, at 36 the nation's youngest House speaker, told members of the House's GOP majority of his resignation by telephone during a conference call. He later issued a statement.

Five days after a brutal ice storm battered this country town, it still looks like it is under the control of a comic book frost villain. Half the streets are shrouded in darkness because of downed power lines frozen solid as steel. Gnarled oak trees lay shattered along slick roads after crumpling under the weight of so much frozen rain. Gas stations are crammed with desperate people buying food and fuel for generators. Shelters are full of families waiting to go home.

The pilot of a TV news helicopter used the wind from the aircraft's rotor to push a stranded deer to safety after it lost its footing on a frozen lake and could not get up. A small crowd had gathered to watch the deer struggling on Lake Thunderbird. With the helicopter's camera rolling, KWTV pilot Mason Dunn used the wind from the rotor to push the deer, sending it sliding on its belly across the ice until it reached shore and ran into a nearby wooded area.

Remote, desolate and speckled with communities that can barely be called towns, the Oklahoma panhandle can be a tough place to scrape out a living. On a deserted main street in Hooker (population 1,788), nearly every one of the red-brick storefronts is shuttered. The Rexall drugstore, a restaurant and a women's clothing store have closed. Recently, the lumberyard went out of business. "We're dying on the vine," Mayor Bill Longest said.

Frustrated with the federal government's response to illegal immigration, Oklahoma is poised to become the next state to pass a tough law targeting illegal immigrants and the businesses that employ them. A sweeping measure moving through the Legislature would deny welfare benefits, in-state college tuition rates and numerous state subsidies to those in the country illegally.

Flames and smoke poured into the sky over an oil refinery in Wynnewood where lightning had set off a fire and an explosion that was felt miles away, authorities said. No injuries were reported, and there were no immediate evacuation orders in the south-central Oklahoma town, according to a spokesman for the refinery. Flames and smoke rose hundreds of feet from two 80,000-gallon tanks in the Wynnewood Refinery complex, officials said.

A judge in Oklahoma City on Friday dismissed murder charges against a man who was sentenced to death three times in the 1982 slaying of a teenager, convictions that were based largely on testimony from a police department chemist who was fired for fraud and misconduct in 2001. Oklahoma District Court Judge Twyla Mason Gray ruled that the case against Curtis E.

R.E. Humbertson, wherever you are, you are the winner of "Miss Belvedere," the rusty 1957 Plymouth hauled from its leaky vault last week after being buried for half a century. Humbertson, born in July 1921, or his or her closest living relative, has five years to claim the two-door hardtop, organizers announced. When the car was buried in 1957, hundreds submitted guesses as to what Tulsa's population would be in 2007. Humbertson's guess of 384,743 was only slightly off the official U.S.

Storms dumped up to 18 inches of rain in central Texas on Wednesday, flooding several towns and stranding dozens of people on rooftops, on the tops of cars and in trees. No fatalities were reported in the latest in a series of storms blamed for at least 11 deaths in the last 1 1/2 weeks. The downpours and winds were so treacherous early Wednesday that helicopters had to halt efforts to rescue people from rooftops.