Briefly

Ground zero suicide may be Bush protest

New York A 25-year-old from Georgia who was apparently distraught over President Bush’s re-election shot and killed himself at ground zero.

Andrew Veal’s body was found Saturday morning inside the off-limits site, said Steve Coleman, a spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. A shotgun was found nearby, but no suicide note was found, Coleman said.

Veal’s mother said her son was upset about the result of the presidential election and had driven to New York, Gus Danese, president of the Port Authority Police Benevolent Association, told the New York Times in Sunday’s editions.

Friends said Veal worked in a computer lab at the University of Georgia and was planning to marry.

“I’m absolutely sure it’s a protest,” Mary Anne Mauney, Veal’s supervisor at the lab, told the Daily News. “I don’t know what made him commit suicide, but where he did it was symbolic.”

Foot-dragging alleged on slavery monument

Philadelphia Some black leaders and scholars are accusing the National Park Service of dragging its feet on a congressional order to commemorate slaves kept by George Washington at the first presidential mansion.

Congress directed the park service two years ago to build a monument at the site, which is just steps from the Liberty Bell at Philadelphia’s Independence National Historical Park, but it remains vacant and unacknowledged.

The commemoration would be the first federal memorial to slavery in the nation.

“We have to tell the truth, whether it hurts or not,” said Charles Blockson, a curator of African American artifacts at Temple University. “In the city of Philadelphia, it’s never been told.”

Park Superintendent Mary Bomar said the delays have been caused in part by disagreement among historians over the exact location where Washington’s slaves once lived, as well as a lack of funding.

We’re not sweeping anything under the rug,” she said. “Nothing would suit me better than to move forward on this project.”

Online sellers fined for running up bids

Albany, N.Y. Eight eBay sellers were ordered to pay nearly $90,000 in restitution and fines after admitting they bid up products online to inflate the prices.

New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer said more than 120 people will receive restitution in the settlement of the three cases, which wrapped up last week in state courts.

Spokesman Darren Dopp said the cases stemmed from specific complaints, but the office has not conducted a broad investigation of the online auction industry and doesn’t know how widespread the practice of phony bidding is.

One buyer, Brad Clarke, 48, of Peachtree City, Ga., already has received a check for $3,089 after overpaying for a 1999 Jeep Cherokee sport utility vehicle he bought on eBay from a New York seller in 2002.

“I’d always been suspicious because it seems like an easy thing to do, to just keep bidding up,” Clarke said. “But I was still just completely shocked and very surprised.”

Three sellers were accused of making 610 bids on 106 of their car auctions under the user name “Mother’s Custom Automotive NY Dealer.” They are paying more than $28,000 in penalties and restitution, Spitzer said. Their lawyers declined to comment.