In the Nation

WASHINGTON - President Obama yesterday named Jeffrey Zients, a longtime management consultant, as chief performance officer to head an effort to streamline government and cut costs.

Zients, a founder and managing partner of the investment firm Portfolio Logic, will also serve as a deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget.

Obama also named Aneesh Chopra, currently secretary of technology for Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine, as chief technology officer to help reduce health-care costs and foster cybersecurity. He will work with chief information officer Vivek Kundra, who will be responsible for setting technology policy across the government. - AP

DOVER, Ohio - A large chemical spill early yesterday at an east-central Ohio plant spawned a massive vapor cloud that took hours to dissipate. There were no injuries.

More than 27,000 gallons of hydrochloric acid leaked from a storage tank into a retention basin at Dover Chemical Corp. around 12:30 a.m., Dover Fire Chief Brooks Ross said.

The leak was contained onsite, but a vapor cloud developed and lingered for hours after the leak was discovered, Ross said. - AP

NEW YORK - A New York judge has given a woman permission to harvest her dead lover's sperm so she can still have his baby.

Johnny Quintana, 31, died Thursday of an apparent heart attack. He had wanted to have a second child with his fiancee, Gisela Marrero, but the only way to make it happen was to quickly collect his sperm, which stays fresh for only 36 hours after death.

A court order was needed because Quintana and Marrero were not yet married. The Bronx judge said "yes" Friday with only four hours left until the deadline. - AP

WASHINGTON - The Obama administration will boycott "with regret" a U.N. conference on racism next week over objectionable language in the meeting's final document that could single out Israel for criticism and restrict free speech, the State Department said yesterday.

The decision follows weeks of furious internal debate and will likely please Israel and Jewish groups that lobbied against U.S. participation. But the move upset human-rights advocates and some in the African American community who had hoped that President Obama, the nation's first black president, would send an official delegation. - AP

The Aryan Nations has returned to northern Idaho with what it is calling a "world headquarters" and a recruitment campaign. Jerald O'Brien of Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, a leader of the white-supremacist group, said he expected President Obama's election to increase membership.

The Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center opens today in Skokie. The $45 million museum houses survivor testimonies and artifacts such as a Nazi-era rail car and an original volume of the Nuremberg war-crimes trial transcripts.