Across the Nation

DURHAM, N.C. — The prosecutor who led the now-discredited Duke lacrosse rape case reported to jail Friday to serve a 24-hour sentence for contempt of court. The city, meanwhile, was in settlement talks with the three exonerated players.

According to a person close to the case, attorneys for the three players are seeking $30 million from Durham and reforms in the legal process.

If the terms aren’t met, they will sue early next month, the person told The Associated Press on Friday, speaking on condition of anonymity because the proposed settlement wasn’t complete.

The former district attorney, Mike Nifong, declined to speak with reporters as he arrived at the jail. He was disbarred for ethics violations in his handling of the case, and a judge found him in contempt for lying to the court when he insisted he had given defense attorneys all results from critical DNA tests.

A small group of supporters accompanied Nifong with signs reading, "We believe in your integrity and goodness.”

Search area expanded for missing aviator Steve Fossett

MINDEN, Nev. — Pilots took off into clear skies Friday for a fifth day of searching Nevada’s rugged high desert for any sign of missing adventurer Steve Fossett.

The search area was expanded to 10,000 square miles, roughly the size of Massachusetts, and there were still few clues to the 63-year-old aviator’s whereabouts and no evidence that his small plane had crashed.

"Each day when I walk into the operational briefing, everybody’s hopeful that this will be the day that we find Mr. Fossett,” said Chuck Allen, a Nevada Highway Patrol trooper helping lead the effort.

He said the search conditions were ideal, with light wind and no clouds.

"The weather’s holding out,” Allen said as search planes roared down the runway at the airport in Minden, which is serving as the search-and-rescue base.

Fossett took off Monday from a private airstrip about 80 miles southeast of Reno to scout possible sites for his planned attempt to break the land speed record. He didn’t file a flight plan for his Bellanca Citabria Super Decathlon, and no signals had been picked up from the plane’s locator beacon.

Elderly Oregon woman survives 2 weeks in woods

BAKER CITY, Ore. — A woman in her seventies has astounded doctors by surviving nearly two weeks in the thick woods of Eastern Oregon’s rugged Wallowa Mountains.

Doctors said Doris Anderson was hours from death when found on Thursday, with a body temperature that had dropped to 90 degrees.

Lost on a hunting trip, the grandmother of seven was lightly clothed and had no supplies or survival gear as overnight temperatures dropped into the 30s during her ordeal.

"I’ve never seen anything like it,” said her emergency room doctor, Dr. Steve DeLashmutt. "For being out in the mountains for a couple of weeks she was in pretty good shape, amazingly good shape.”

Family members gave her age as 77 Friday but the hospital admissions office and the Oregon Department of Motor Vehicles list it as 76.

Anderson was listed in critical but stable condition Friday night. She was extremely dehydrated, cold and incoherent when she arrived at St. Elizabeth Health Services in Baker City after being found by two law enforcement officers.

DeLashmutt said Anderson may have sustained herself with water from a nearby creek. Her hip was injured but not broken, he said.

Family members said Friday evening that she has talked to them but has revealed no details of her ordeal.

She is expected to be hospitalized for about a week.

Southwest Airlines employee tells female passenger her skimpy outfit won’t fly

SAN DIEGO — A 23-year-old woman who boarded a Southwest Airlines plane in a short skirt for a flight to Arizona says she was led off the plane for wearing an outfit that was considered too skimpy.

Kyla Ebbert said a Southwest employee asked her to leave her seat while the plane was preparing to leave San Diego’s Lindbergh Field on July 3. Ebbert, a student who was headed to Tucson for a doctor’s appointment, said Friday on NBC’s "Today” show that the employee told her she would have to catch a later flight.

"You’re dressed inappropriately. This is a family airline. You’re too provocative to fly on this plane,” she quoted the employee as saying.

"I said, ’What part is it? The shirt? The skirt? Which part?’ And he said the whole thing.”

Ebbert was eventually allowed back on the plane after offering to adjust her sweater but said she was humiliated and embarrassed.

"I felt like everybody was staring at me. They had all heard him lecturing me,” she told "Today” show host Matt Lauer. She appeared on the show in the same short white skirt, white shirt and green sweater that she said she wore on the flight.

Chris Mainz, a spokesman for the Dallas-based airline, said a customer service supervisor asked Ebbert to leave the plane and addressed her in the walkway leading back to the terminal, "away from the other customers.”

The employee felt the outfit "revealed too much” but was placated after Ebbert made adjustments that included covering her stomach, Mainz said.