In the Nation

CLARENCE, N.Y. - Hundreds of mourners gathered yesterday to remember two of the 50 victims of a commuter-plane crash: a Sept. 11 widow, and a Vietnam veteran who died when Flight 3407 plunged into his home in suburban Buffalo.

Beverly Eckert carried the grief of husband Sean Rooney's death into becoming a prominent advocate for the families of the 9/11 victims, her brother-in-law, Bill Bourque, said at a packed memorial service in a Buffalo church. Eckert, 57, was headed to her hometown of Buffalo to celebrate what would have been her husband's 58th birthday.

Douglas Wielinski, 61, was inside his house in Clarence when the plane fell on it as it approached Buffalo on the night on Feb. 12, killing him and all 49 people aboard.

"The pain is great but the memories are greater and the love will remain," Wielinski's wife of 29 years, Karen, said in a message read by a friend at a memorial service at the Clarence Middle School, which the couple's four daughters attend. - AP

NEW YORK - A Nigerian man has been charged with trying to swindle nearly $27 million from an account in New York held by Ethiopia's central bank.

Paul Gabriel Amos, 37, sent fake documents to Citibank in New York where the National Bank of Ethiopia kept funds, purporting to authorize money transfers to accounts that he and coconspirators controlled, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York.

Amos pleaded not guilty Friday in Federal District Court in Manhattan to one count of conspiracy to commit bank and wire fraud. He and his coconspirators made wire transfers to accounts in Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Australia, China, Cyprus, and the United States, prosecutors said.

The fraud was uncovered after banks where the conspirators held accounts returned money to the Citibank because the National Bank of Ethiopia didn't recognize the transactions. - AP

WASHINGTON - The Obama administration, siding with former President George W. Bush, is trying to kill a lawsuit that seeks to recover what could be millions of missing White House e-mails.

Two advocacy groups suing the Executive Office of the President said that large amounts of White House e-mail documenting Bush's eight years in office may still be missing, and that the government must undertake an extensive recovery effort.

They expressed disappointment that Obama's Justice Department is continuing the Bush administration's bid to get the lawsuits dismissed.

"The new administration seems no more eager than the last" to deal with the issue, said Anne Weismann, chief counsel for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, one of the two groups that sued the EOP. - AP

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is coming to the Washington next month for talks with President Obama, the White House said yesterday.