A teenager accused of killing a mother and injuring her daughter with a machete during a Mont Vernon home invasion was convicted Tuesday of murder and other charges. Jurors deliberated for about 90 minutes before returning their verdict against 19-year-old Steven Spader. The first-degree murder conviction carries an…
November 9, 2010
Iran
An explosion at a munitions depot at a Revolutionary Guard base in Iran yesterday killed at least 12 people, an Iranian news outlet reported. According to a report on the news website Mashreghnews.ir, which is close to the Iranian government, at least 20 more people were injured. The report cited no sources, and Iranian officials did not disclose the ranks of those killed or the…
October 13, 2010
American and Chinese defense chiefs met for the first time in a year yesterday in Hanoi, Vietnam, as they sought to overcome a period of unusual strain between the two militaries. Defense Secretary Robert Gates conferred privately with Chinese Defense Minister Liang Guanglie for half an hour on the eve of a regional defense conference in the Vietnamese capital. Gates said afterward…
October 12, 2010
germany
A ferry carrying around 240 people caught fire in the Baltic Sea, injuring 22 people, German authorities said yesterday. All passengers and crew were rescued. An explosion on the upper deck of the 650-foot Lisco Gloria set the ship ablaze at about midnight, authorities said. It was not immediately clear what caused the explosion. The Lithuanian-flagged ferry was traveling from…
October 10, 2010
chicago
The hoopla over the race to replace Chicago Mayor Richard Daley is already overshadowing midterm election campaigns for governor and the U.S. Senate seat given up by President Obama. Statewide candidates find themselves losing airtime on the news and space in the local papers to a mayor's race that's wide open for the first time in years after Mayor Richard Daley decided not to…
October 9, 2010
Cable news was filled with talk of a possible bid for president by Donald Trump after word of a poll in New Hampshire included questions about Trump. Trump said he was surprised to be included in such a key poll and insisted he was not associated with it in any way. But rather than rule himself out, he was careful to leave the door open for a draft. "For the first time in my…
October 6, 2010
Freakish fall weather has resulted in a national kimchi crisis, causing South Korean consumers to clutch at their purses, hearts and stomachs as they seek to deal with a shortage of the oblong-shaped cabbage used to make the ubiquitous spicy dish. With heavy September rains ruining much of the Napa, or Chinese, cabbage crop, prices have jumped fourfold to more than $10 a head.…
October 5, 2010
california
Military officials say a refueling hose fell from a cargo plane and landed on a house in a San Diego County neighborhood. Nobody was injured. Maj. Jay Delarosa of Marine Corps Air Station Miramar says investigators will try to determine how the heavy-duty retractable hose became detached from a C-130J Hercules late yesterday morning. The house in Carmel Mountain just north of…
October 3, 2010
Senate turns down TV commercials Legislation to turn down the volume on those loud TV commercials that send couch potatoes diving for their remote controls looks like it'll soon become law. The Senate unanimously passed a bill Wednesday to require TV stations and cable companies to keep commercials at the same volume as the programs they interrupt. The House has passed similar…
October 1, 2010
President Obama reopened yesterday what is often a sore subject in Washington, D.C., saying his daughters could not obtain from District of Columbia public schools the academic experience they receive at the private Sidwell Friends School. Obama made his comments on NBC's Today show in response to a woman who asked whether Malia and Sasha Obama "would get the same kind of education…
September 28, 2010
Who says you can't go back? Apparently you can at the U.S. Postal Service. Dozens of former top executives and hundreds of former employees have returned to the agency in recent years as private contractors, sometimes making double the salaries they made as full-time workers, according to one of three watchdog audits released late last week. The reports said the cash-strapped…
September 27, 2010
Wyoming
A Cheyenne, Wyo., man who doused himself with white latex paint in hopes of avoiding a police Taser was hit with the stun gun anyway. The Taser chase happened Sept. 16, when the Cheyenne police went to Brian Mattert's house on a domestic violence call. The Wyoming Tribune Eagle reports that when the police arrived, Mattert thought they'd use a Taser on him, so he hastily covered…
September 26, 2010
washington state
A federal judge said the Air Force violated the constitutional rights of a highly decorated flight nurse when it discharged her for being gay, and ordered that she be given her job back as soon as possible. U.S. District Judge Ronald Leighton issued his highly anticipated ruling yesterday in the case of former Maj. Margaret Witt. She was discharged under the "don't ask, don't tell"…
September 25, 2010
Chicago
A Chicago man has been charged with plotting to bomb a strip of crowded night spots about the time people were leaving a Dave Matthews concert at Wrigley Field over the weekend. Sami Samir Hassoun, 22, was arrested as he placed a backpack containing what he thought were high explosives in a trash can in front of Sluggers, about a block south of Wrigley Field, according to the FBI.…
September 21, 2010
