Mississippi voters reject anti-abortion initiative

Mississippi voters defeated a ballot initiative that would've declared life begins at conception, a proposal that supporters sought in the Bible Belt state as a way to prompt a legal challenge to abortion rights nationwide. The so-called "personhood" initiative was rejected by more than 55 percent of voters. If it had passed, it would have conflicted with the Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that established a legal right to abortion. Supporters of the initiative wanted to provoke a lawsuit to challenge the landmark ruling.

In Other News Penn State's board of trustees says it will create a special committee on Friday to investigate the sex abuse allegations made against a former assistant football coach. The announcement Tuesday came after supporters of head football coach Joe Paterno rallied outside his home while others called for him to resign because of the child sex scandal. Rapper Heavy D collapsed in his Beverly Hills home Tuesday morning and died a short time later at a Los Angeles hospital, according to police and the coroner. He was 44. Heavy D, whose real name is Dwight Arrington Myers, was found conscious with difficulty breathing at his home after police were called there at 11:25 a.m. The cause of death has not been determined. An asteroid the size of an aircraft carrier passed within the moon's orbit Tuesday, the closest approach by an object that large in more than 30 years. Asteroid 2005 YU55 passed within 202,000 miles of Earth -- about four-fifths of the distance to the moon -- at 6:28 p.m. Tuesday. Though the space agency classified the asteroid as a "potentially hazardous object," it posed no threat of a collision, according to NASA. If the asteroid had crashed into Earth, it could have caused a 4,000-megaton blast and a magnitude 7.0 earthquake, according to scientists at Purdue University. If it fell into the ocean, it could have caused a 70-foot-high tsunami within 60 miles of the crash site. The last time a space rock in the same league as 2005 YU55 passed as close to Earth was in 1976, NASA said. The next similar encounter is projected for Former heavyweight boxing champion Joe Frazier died Monday, shortly after announcing he had liver cancer.