MORE SEARCHES FOR MEXICO-BOUND GUNS

OTAY MESA, Calif. — Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano yesterday promised to add two dozen agents in the San Diego area to inspect Mexico-bound vehicles for weapons and drug profits, as part of a new federal anti-drug strategy announced last week.

On a visit to the southwest border, Napolitano said the agents will help staff regular checkpoints that had been used sporadically for the past two years. They will look to intercept high-powered weaponry that is believed to be fueling much of the drug violence in Mexico.

"We're taking them on, and we're taking them out. That's our goal," said Napolitano at a news conference at the Otay Mesa border crossing, where recently seized AR-15 assault rifles were on display.

FARGO STARTS CLEANING UP FLOOD MESS

FARGO, N.D. — Fargo was back in business yesterday, as shops reopened and residents began the unpleasant task of cleaning out muck and hauling waterlogged furniture from homes swamped by the retreating Red River.

Streets were packed with motorists returning to work and other aspects of daily life as the river dropped below the top of permanent floodwalls, which have been temporarily heightened with sandbags.

Forecasters said the river could rise again when more snow melts, but isn't expected to approach the levels feared during the weekend, when the river reached a record 40.82 feet early Saturday. Mayor Dennis Walaker said the city has no immediate plans to remove roughly 3 million sandbags being used as levees.

OBAMA'S KENYAN AUNT SEEKING ASYLUM

BOSTON — President Obama's aunt will remain in the United States until at least next year as she awaits a chance to make her case before an immigration judge in her bid for asylum from her native Kenya.

Zeituni Onyango made an initial appearance in U.S. Immigration Court in Boston yesterday. At the brief hearing, a judge set her case hearing for Feb. 4, 2010.

Onyango, 56, first applied for asylum in 2002, but her request was rejected and she was ordered to leave the U.S. in 2004. She did not leave and continued to live in public housing in Boston.

NURSE CHARGED IN 5 KILLINGS WITH BLEACH

SAN ANTONIO — A nurse has been charged with injecting 10 patients with bleach, killing five of them, at a Texas dialysis clinic that temporarily closed last year after deaths mysteriously spiked.

Since the deaths over a four-week span last April, Kimberly Saenz, 35, had been the focus of the investigation at the DaVita Inc. clinic in Lufkin and was fired. She was charged in May with aggravated assault involving bleach injections in two patients who survived, but she had not been charged in any deaths until late Tuesday.

9 INDIGENTS' 2,678 ER VISITS COST $3M

AUSTIN, Texas — Just nine people accounted for nearly 2,700 of the emergency room visits in the Austin area during the past six years at a cost of $3 million to taxpayers and others, according to a report.

The patients went to hospital emergency rooms 2,678 times from 2003 through 2008, said the nonprofit Integrated Care Collaboration, a group of healthcare providers that care for low-income and uninsured patients.

Eight of the nine patients have drug abuse problems, seven were diagnosed with mental health issues and three were homeless, the Austin American-Statesman reported yesterday.

BIZARRE BUNNY JUST IN TIME FOR EASTER

MILFORD, Conn. — It's no April Fool's joke. The baby bunny really does have two noses.

A Connecticut pet shop worker found the nosy bunny in a delivery of 6-week-old dwarf rabbits that arrived at the Milford store last week.

Both noses have two nostrils.

Beardsley Zoo director Gregg Dancho says the deformity could be the result of too much inbreeding or the parents' exposure to pesticides or poisons.