An Iraq war veteran who pleaded no contest to involuntary manslaughter in the death of his 2-year-old son was ordered to pay for the funeral but spared from prison. Prosecutors had sought the maximum sentence of almost two years in prison for William C. Ullom, but Judge William C. Gore Jr. said Thursday that too much time had passed since little Christian Norris was violently shaken in 2002. "Some people will look at your defendant as a baby killer; others will say he is the authentic American hero," the judge said. "At this point, this far removed from the actual act … it appears to not be in the interest of justice to put him in prison."...
http://abcnews.go.com
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Editor - 09:57:00 01-20-06
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 FirstEnergy to pay $28M fine, saying workers hid damage |
Acknowledging that its employees covered up serious damage at a nuclear power plant, the facility's owner has agreed to pay $28 million in fines, restitution and community service projects, the U.S. Justice Department announced Friday. Inspectors found an acid leak in 2002 that nearly ate through a 6-inch steel cap on the reactor vessel at the Davis-Besse plant owned by FirstEnergy Corp. Officials said it was the most extensive corrosion ever seen at a U.S. nuclear reactor. Company and Nuclear Regulatory Commission investigations concluded that the rust hole had been growing for at least four years and that Davis-Besse's managers had ignored the evidence because they were focused on profits rather than safety at the plant, which sits along the Lake Erie shore about 30 miles east of Toledo. ...
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-01-20-nuke-plant-fine_x.htm?csp=34
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Editor - 09:55:00 01-20-06
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| German spies' Iraq role defended |
The German foreign minister has strongly defended two German intelligence agents whose role in the Iraq war has been questioned by MPs. In a heated parliamentary debate, Frank-Walter Steinmeier dismissed claims that the agents had helped the US military to select bombing targets. The agents had given "no support for the pursuit of war", he said. Opposition parties are pushing for an inquiry into the role of German intelligence in the 2003 Iraq war. A decision on whether to hold such an inquiry has been put off until next week, the BBC's Ray Furlong in Berlin says. The passionate parliamentary debate reflects the fact that the Iraq war is still haunting German political life, our correspondent says. Suggestions of a German role in the war have caused concern, especially because of the country's strong opposition to the US-led invasion. ...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4630734.stm
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Editor - 09:52:00 01-20-06
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| China arrests rise in restive Xinjiang |
Chinese authorities arrested more than 18,000 people for national security reasons in the mainly Muslim western region of Xinjiang last year, a newspaper said on Friday, which a dissident described as a rise of a quarter. Uighur activists, who Beijing says are terrorists trying to split China, have been struggling for decades for self-determination in remote Xinjiang, formally established as an autonomous region on October 1, 1955. The official Xinjiang Daily put the number of people arrested in the region for threatening state security — which China considers everything from terrorism to sometimes even talking to foreign reporters — at 18,227 people in 2005. ...
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=1524699
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Editor - 01:17:00 01-20-06
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| CIA warned its operatives to stay out of Italy, according to e-mail |
The CIA warned its operatives to stay out of Italy after learning that Italian prosecutors were preparing to seek arrest warrants in the agency's 2003 kidnapping of a radical Muslim preacher, according to an e-mail message recovered from the computer drive of the chief suspect in the case.One CIA employee who received the e-mail later wrote to the agency's retired chief in Milan, Robert Seldon Lady, that she was "extremely relieved" to learn that Lady had managed to cross the border into Switzerland and was "in Geneva until this blew over" rather than "sitting in some Italian holding cell."The employee, who is now living in Virginia, wrote that she had been taken aback when she "suddenly got an e-mail through work which was entitled, `Italy, don't go there.'" Reached by telephone, the employee said she was not at liberty to discuss her e-mail to Lady, which was dated Dec. 24, 2004....
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/politics/13665883.htm
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Editor - 01:14:00 01-20-06
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| State quarter's extra leaf grew out of lunch break |
The release of thousands of flawed Wisconsin state quarters that set off a buying frenzy, and speculations of foul play, was a mistake stemming from an ill-timed meal break, a government investigation has found. As many as 50,000 of the faulty coins, 50 times the amount earlier thought, entered circulation in 2004 after the coins were produced and bagged during an operator's break, according to the Treasury Department's Office of Inspector General. The flawed Wisconsin coins, which have sold for thousands of dollars, appear to have an extra leaf on the left side of an ear of corn.The Wisconsin quarters went into circulation in 2004 as part of the 10-year state quarter program run by the Mint, an agency in the Treasury Department. The quarters "were most likely produced as a result of machine or product deficiencies, not as a result of an intentional act," according to the report, obtained by USA TODAY through a Freedom of Information Act request. ...
http://www.usatoday.com/money/2006-01-20-quarter-goof-usat_x.htm?csp=34
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Editor - 00:42:00 01-20-06
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