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Show t A4 HERALD DAILY Friday, January 18, 2008 FAST FACT Morning Briefing ' The Herring and its relations, the trout and salmon, are the oldest and most primitive group of modern true bony fish, recorded at the end of the Mesozoic period. ' Compiled from Daily Herald wire sen'ices The Nation U.S. fugitives Wife of Marine wanted in slaying knew of woman's death rrf " . : i. JACKSONVILLE, N.C. ,4 The wife of the key suspect in the slaying of a pregnant Marine waited almost 24 hours after learning of the woman's death to go to authorities, according to court documents released Thursday. The sheriff's affidavit, which ' details the account Cpl. Cesar Armando Laurean's wife gave to detectives, does not provide i an explanation for why she waited. Police have consistent' f&f ly described her as a cooperating witness, and she does not face charges. Laurean told his wife, Christina, while driving to their attorney's office last Thursday that Lance Cpl. Maria Lauter-bacvisited the couple's home on Dec. 15, demanded money "J and told him she planned to leave the area, according the JOHN GAPS IllThe Des Moines Register affidavit. Lauterbach had accused Laurean of rape in May, a charge Snow flies from spinning wheels as Kelly Bittner tries to back her buried car off the median in he denied to military Des Moines, Iowa, on Thursday. Pushing on the back is her stepfather Kevin Heinzeroth. An tors. arctic blast is expected to blow into Iowa on Friday, pushing wind chills to dangerous levels, Laurean asked his wife National Weather Service forecasters said. whether she was "with him on this" as they headed to the attorney's office, according to One defendant was a doctor identified and health officials of Kansas have given themthe affidavit. She responded: "I do not know. Is there anything back home and a top scorer on say the public health risk is selves," he said. low. But others say the law is a the country's medical board you have not told me?" That's when Laurean told her what The deadly strain was found dangerous tool. exams, but decided it was more lucrative to be a nurse in in seven bottles and on the had happened, the af f idav it "This is a witch hunt plain the United States. Others had states. floor near the homogenizer and simple," said Vicki at the Shrewsbury plant. Difrespectable medical jobs back president of the National home and viewed their work ferent listeria strains were Abortion Federation, an aborFilipino nurses face in New York as a dream come found inside four other bottles tion rights group. "It clearly criminal charges true. of milk and at three different demonstrates the inherent in a For areas inside the plant RIVERHEAD, N.Y. danger of empowering biased Health off icials find months, the nurses comdrain, in a bottle washer and advocacy groups to impanel a in an empty unwashed bottle. plained that they were subject grand jury." listeria strain in Mass. . rvir J- - spared possible death penalty - Michelle Roberts THE ly quit. BOSTON Investigators probing the source of a listeria outbreak said Thursday the strain that killed three people was found at a dairy processing plant in central Massachusetts. But officials have not yet But in doing so, they put more than their careers at risk: Prosecutors hit them with determined exactly where the criminal charges for allegedly milk was contaminated. "We know that there's a jeopardizing the lives of terminally ill children they were in problem in that plant and we have connected the patients charge of watching. The 10 nurses and the atto the products to the plant, torney who advised them were now it would be nice to know exactly how that happened, charged with conspiracy and child endangerment in what but that is part of the ongoing defense lawyers say is an uninvestigation," said Dr. Alfred DeMaria, state director of comprecedented use of criminal municable disease control. law in a labor; dispute. If convicted of the misdeThree elderly men have died since June after drinking meanor offenses, they face milk up to a year in jail on each of 13 counts, and could lose from the Whittier Farms plant in Shrewsbury, about 35 miles their nursing licenses and be west of Boston. deported. The case has unfolded The same strain of listeria sickened a pregnant woman, against the backdrop of a who then miscarried. A second chronic nursing shortage in the United States. All of the de- woman also was sickened fendants were from the Philipafter drinking milk fromhe pines, which exported 120,000 plant. No new cases have been nurses last year. bacteria-contaminat- More than taken. 100 samples were Abortion foes use Kansas law to launch grand jury 19th-centu- WICHITA, Kan. Conn, cops charge baby sitter with murder ry ELLINGTON, Conn. Religious conservatives have dusted off a largely forgotten 1887 state law that allows citizens to launch grand jury investigations, and they are using it to help turn Kansas into one of the nation's biggest abortion battlegrounds. A grand jury that was impaneled Jan. 8 by way of a citizen petition drive is investigating Dr. George Tiller, a Wichita clinic operator abhorred by activists because he is one of the nation's few physicians who perform abortions. This is the second such citizen investigation anti-aborti- late-ter- of Tiller since 2006. Phillip Jauregui, counsel for Life Legal the s Defense Foundation, said n Kan-san- are invoking the law because prosecutors are too soft on abortion. "This is a right the people y Julie never worried when she spotted a fresh bruise on her son. He just played rough with the baby sitter's son, she thought. Yet there was the working mom on Thursday, burying her boy, Elijah Gasque, in a snow covered rural cemetery and trying to understand now he wound up with a fractured skull in the care of the sitter, Yalines Torres. "What, did he cry too much for her? I don't know why she would do it," Adkins-Gasqu- e said after the funeral. "I'm angry. I'm confused. I'm blank Adkins-Gasqu- e sometimes. I miss my son." A judge in Hartford arraigned Torres on a murder charge Thursday and set her bail at $1 million in the child's death last weekend. Torres told investigators his head smacked a door frame as she ran around with him slung over her shoulder in a sleeping .bag. More extraditions PRESS A dealer who a deputy during down gunned a traffic stop in Southern California. A man in Arizona who killed his par- ents and brother and snatched his children. A man who suffocated his baby daughter and left her body in a toolbag on an expressway overpass near h Big chill in Iowa ASSOCIATED SAN. ANTONIO fr to demeaning and unfair not working conditions what they were promised when they came to America from the Philippines in search of a better life. So they abrupt- Source: Micropedia of Work) Facts Chicago. Ordinarily, these would be death penalty cases. But these men fled to Mexico, thereby escaping t he possibility of execution. The reason: Mexico refuses to send anyone back to the United States unless the U.S. , gives assurances it won't seek a the death penalty policy that rankles some American prosecutors and enrages victims' families. "We find it extremely disturbing that the.Mexican government would dictate to us, in Arizona, how we would enforce our laws at the same time they are complaining about our immigration laws," said Barnett Lotstein, special assistant to the prosecutor in Maricopa County, Ariz., which includes Phoenix. "Even in the most egregious cases, the Mexican authorities say, 'No way,' and that's not justice. That's an interference of Mexican authorities in our judicial process in Arizona." It may be about to happen again: A Marine accused of murdering a pregnant comrade in North Carolina and burning her remains in his backyard is believed to have fled to Mexico. Prosecutors said they have not decided whether to seek the death penalty. But if the Marine is captured in Mexico, capital punishment will be off the table. Fugitives trying to escape the long arm of the laV have been making a run for the border ever since frontier days, a practice romanticized in countless Hollywood Westerns. Mexico routinely returns fugitives to the U.S. to face justice. But under a 1978 treaty with the U.S., Mexico, which has no death penalty, will not extradite anyone facing possible execution. To get their hands on a fugitive, U.S. prosecutors must agree to seek no more than life in prison. Other countries, including The World Australia returns activists from Japanese whaling ship A SYDNEY, Australia tense standoff in frigid Antarctic waters ended Friday when two activists who had jumped on board a Japanese whaling ship were returned to their vessel by Australian officials. Their return paved the way for the Japanese fleet to resume killing whales, and for their staunchest opponents to restart their campaign of harassment to stop them. The activists from an group, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, had been detained on the Japanese harpoon boat Yushin Maru 2 since Tuesday. The dispute uns naderscored the ture of the contest fought each year in the remote and dangerous seas at the far south of the world, thousands of miles from the possibility of regular emergency or rescue services. i.: ripped from the craft during the landing and could be seen on grass near the runway. Pakistan faces wheat flour shortages PESHAWAR. Pakistan When the delivery truck finally arrives. Ialxrer Shcr Nawaz joins about 400 Pakistanis scrambling to buy a sack of wheat flour. He returns empty-hande"We were told there was a bumper crop of wheat this season, but look at us," says Nawaz, 45, his voice trembling KHALID TANVEERAssociated Press with anger. He waited three force stand guard at a flour mill hours in a crowd of bearded Troops of Pakistan to control the supply in Multan, Pakistan on Wednesday. men wrapped in woolen shawls and burqa-clawomen at a Peshawar bazartr, only to have the clouded the plane's underbelly and flour run out before he and 1(K) others got any. peace talks, resumed after a damaging its wings. Mideast conference in NovemNot hing suggested it was This is because of mismanageterror-relateber sponsored by IYesident ment by the government." Scotland Yard Bush. The spike in violence has said. Timothy Crowch, an aviaWhile terror attacks have drawn condemnations from left hundreds dead, it is flour tion analyst with 35 years of moderate Palestinian President experience as a commercial shortages and rising food Mahmoud Abbas, Israel's partpilot, said the landing gear prices that will be the most ner in the peace negotiations. (jaza militants and punched through both wings, pressing issues in elections On Thursday, Abbas spokes- indicating a "massive vertical next month in this poor nation fire Israeli forces man Nabil Abu Rdeineh told of KiO million people. impact." That suggests a total The Associated Press that the GAZA CITY. Gaza Strip loss of engine power may have Food prices jumped by about violence is calling into question been the cause, he said. 14 Israel pummeled Gaza Thurs- percent in 2007. on top Robert Cullemore of Aviation of double-digi- t increases for day wilh air and ground fire as further talks. aviPalestinian rockets slammed the two previous years. Now Economics, a London-baseBritish Airways plane ation consultancy, said the pilot Pakistanis wait in long lines at into southern Israel, endangercrash-land- s stores to buy kept the plane in the air long ing recently restarted peace flour for the flat bread usually negotiations. enough to prevent a disaster. A British AirLONDON The Israeli attacks killed a "If it had landed 200 meters eaten with every meal. militant leader and one of his In Peshawar, the main city ways jet from Beijing carrying (05(3 feet) shorter than it did, it 152 people in northwestern Pakistan, the Thursfemale relat ives along w it h may have hit perimeter fence and obviously some other five others in Gaza. market price of a day, injuring 1!) people and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert causing more than 200 flights buildings and the car park, bag of flour has junixxl from to be canceled at Europe's busi- clearly we would be dealing about $4.;) to $8 in less than vowed to strike Palestinian with fatalities and obvious two months. There have been militants "without compromise, est airport.' similar price increases in other without concessions and withInvestigators will speak to damage," Cullemore said. Fire trucks surrounded the out mercy." I lis forces carried the pilots and study the plane's cities, particularly in southern attacks, but Olout stepped-uflight data recorder and mainPakistan, where rioting that folBoeing 777 after it landed, lowed the Dec. 27 assassination mert gave no hint that a large-scal- e tenance records to determine spraying fire rctardant foam what caused the around the aircraft. Two of the of oposition leader Benazir offensive was near. at Heathrow airport, tearing The widening violence has plane's giant wheel units were Bhutto exacerbated shortages. anti-whali- high-stake- y d Israeli-Palestinia- n d trade d d crash-lande- d d . crash-landin- g The majority of fugitives extradited from Mexico are wanted in the U.S. for murder, drugs and sexual offenses. Extraditions have steadily increased over the past decade. Extradited crimes f 2005-'0- 7 40' Murder 37 I U Sexual 1 assau ix" rW Other 7 80 extraditions 60 Extraditions 40 from Mexico Through nJJilil 95 97 SOURCE: .lif Oct. '07 '99 '01 Department of "03 TO '07 Justice AP France and Canada, also demand such "death assurances." But the problem is more common with Mexico, since it is often a quick drive from the crime scene for a large portion of the United States. "If you can get to Mexico if you have the means it's a way of escaping the death penalty," said Issac Unah, a University of North Carolina political science pro- fessor. The Justice Department said death assurances from foreign countries are fairly common, but it had no immediate numbers. State Department officials said Mexico extradited 73 suspects to ' the U.S. in 2007. Most were wanted on drug or murder . charges. Lolita Parkinson, a spokeswoman for the Mexican Consulate in Houston, said Mexico opposes capital punishment on human rights grounds and has a particular obligation to protect the rights of people of Mexican descent who face prosecution in the U.S. The U.S. government typically pays more attention to those entering the country from Mexico than it does to those trying to leave the U.S. But Texas authorities have begun making checks of vehicles and drivers heading south on the 25 international bridges that connect the state to Mexico. The initiative, announced in October, was originally intended to catch drug smug- glers taking cash or stolen cars into Mexico, but "we would hope it would be a deterrent for fugitives" as well, said Allison Castle, a spokeswoman for Gov. Rick Perry. Iranian president accuses Bush of inciting confrontation Sebastian Abbot THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Iranian. CAIRO, Egypt d President Mahmoud said Thursday that President Bush sent a "message of confrontation" during his recent Mideast trip. Bush spent much of his visit to the region, which he wrapped up on Wednesday, rallying support among Arab allies for a strong stance against Iran calling the country the world's top sponsor of terrorism. "President George Bush sent a message to the Iranian people and all the nations worldwide," said Ahmadine-ja- d during an interview in Farsi with television. "This message reflects his own conceptions and it is a message of rift, a message of sowing the seeds of division. It is a message of confrontation demeaning the dignity of mankind." The Iranian president said Bush's statements were made for domestic political reasons. "They are in need of these statements for their presidential race," said Ahmadinejad. Ahma-dineja- "However, these statements increase the sentiment of resentment of the Iranian people against the U.S. of- ficials." Ahmadinejad also lashed out at Israel, a key U.S. ally in the Mideast, saying the country was "rapidly doomed to collapse." "All these nations believe they (the Israelis) are a mur derous group carrying arms and trying through threats to change their image," said Ahmadinejad. Israel on Thursday successe fully tested a new missile, said senior defense officials speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the project. Israeli radio reports indicated the missiles are capable of being armed with nuclear long-rang- warheads. Ahmadinejad dismissed the missile test, saying Israel "lacks the courage to launch any attack against the Iranian state." "They are aware that any attempt or strike will be confronted by a very strong response." added the Iranian president. Tensions between Iran and both Israel and the U.S. have remained high over Tehran's controversial nuclear activities. The U.S. and Israel claim Iran's program could be a pathway to nuclear weapons development, but Tehran insists its intentions are peaceful. "They would like to deceive ouieople alleging that the' nuclear capability would amount to a nuclear weapon," said Ahmadinejad on Thursday. U.S. attempts to keep up international pressure against Iran were complicated by a December intelligence report saying Iran suspended its weajwiis development program in 2003 and has not restarted it. |