Jury convicts ousted Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich
CHICAGO (AP) - Rod Blagojevich, who rode his talkative everyman image to two terms as Illinois governor before scandal made him a national punch line, was convicted Monday of a wide range of corruption charges, including the incendiary allegation that he tried to sell or trade President Barack Obama's Senate seat.
The verdict was a bitter defeat for Blagojevich, who had spent 2 1/2 years professing his innocence on reality TV shows and later on the witness stand. His defense team had insisted that hours of FBI wiretap recordings were just the ramblings of a politician who liked to think out loud.
He faces up to 300 years in prison, although federal sentencing guidelines are sure to significantly reduce his time behind bars.
After hearing the verdict, Blagojevich turned to defense attorney Sheldon Sorosky and asked "What happened?" His wife, Patti, slumped against her brother, then rushed into her husband's arms.
Before the decision was read, the couple looked flushed, and the former governor blew his wife a kiss across the courtroom, then stood expressionless, with his hands clasped tightly.
Authorities order Los Alamos evacuated
LOS ALAMOS, N.M. (AP) - Authorities ordered Los Alamos evacuated Monday as a fast-growing and unpredictable wildfire bore down on the northern New Mexico town and its sprawling nuclear laboratory.
The blaze that began Sunday already had destroyed a number of homes south of the town, which is home to some 12,000 residents. It also forced closure of the nation's pre-eminent nuclear lab while stirring memories of a devastating blaze more than a decade ago that destroyed hundreds of homes and buildings in the area.
Los Alamos County fire chief Doug Tucker said the blaze Sunday night was the most active fire he had seen in his career, forcing residents near Cochiti Mesa and Las Conchas to flee with "nothing but the shirts on their back."
He said at 44,000-acre blaze had destroyed at least 30 structures but it wasn't clear how many were homes.
The fire has the potential to double or triple in size, Tucker said, and firefighters had no idea which direction the 60 mph-plus winds would take it.
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Casey Anthony found competent, trial resumes
ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) - Casey Anthony is competent to remain on trial for murder in the death of her 2-year-old daughter, a judge ruled Monday after examining reports by three psychologists who examined her over the weekend.
Also on the 29th day of testimony, Anthony's attorneys asked Judge Belvin Perry to declare a mistrial and select a new jury, citing a ruling on Florida's death penalty.
Attorneys told the judge they did not believe their 25-year-old client is competent, based on privileged discussions with her. They did not elaborate what led them to that conclusion in a motion filed Saturday and sealed until the judge's ruling.
Perry asked the psychologists to determine whether Anthony could comprehend the charges against her and the possible penalties, and if she could testify relevantly if called to the stand. If convicted on the first-degree murder charge against her, Anthony could face the death penalty.
"Based upon the reports that the court has reviewed, the court will find that the defendant is competent to proceed," Perry said at the start of Monday's hearing.
Prosecutors have argued that Anthony placed duct tape over Caylee Anthony's mouth, suffocating the toddler in summer 2008. Her skeletal remains were found in December that year in the woods near her grandparents' home and much of the forensic evidence produced at the trial has been about what the body revealed.
Defense attorneys claim Caylee Anthony accidentally drowned in the family's swimming pool and that Anthony and her father, George, covered it up. George Anthony has denied any such theory.
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Pressure mounts on Gadhafi as court issues arrest warrant for killing civilians
TRIPOLI, Libya (AP) - Thousands of jubilant Libyans danced and cheered in the streets of the rebel stronghold of Benghazi after the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant Monday for Moammar Gadhafi, accusing him of crimes against humanity for killing civilians who rose up against his rule.
The court order raised pressure on the Gadhafi regime, already targeted by daily airstrikes, and NATO clearly hopes it will encourage key allies to abandon him. But it also gives Gadhafi less incentive to accept a peaceful settlement that would see him leave power - something he has shown no indication of doing - because of the subsequent threat of arrest.
The court in The Hague, Netherlands, lacks police powers, and the force most likely to arrest Gadhafi appears to be the rebels battling to oust him.
At the United Nations, political affairs chief B. Lynn Pascoe said the rebels now hold a tenuous military advantage over Gadhafi's forces. The rebels have failed to penetrate the Libyan leader's center of power in Tripoli and conceded Monday they are unlikely to detain Gadhafi on their own.
Warrants were also issued for Gadhafi's son Seif al-Islam Gadhafi, whom he has groomed as his successor, and for Libyan intelligence chief Abdullah al-Sanoussi. All three men were accused of orchestrating the killing, injuring, arrest and imprisonment of hundreds of civilians during the first 12 days of an uprising to topple Gadhafi from power, and for trying to cover up their alleged crimes.
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Supreme Court rejects California ban on violent video game sales or rentals to kids under 18
WASHINGTON (AP) - States cannot ban the sale or rental of ultraviolent video games to children, the Supreme Court ruled Monday, rejecting such limits as a violation of young people's First Amendment rights and leaving it up to parents and the multibillion-dollar gaming industry to decide what kids can buy.
The high court, on a 7-2 vote, threw out California's 2005 law covering games sold or rented to those under 18, calling it an unconstitutional violation of free-speech rights. Writing for the majority, Justice Antonin Scalia, said, "Even where the protection of children is the object, the constitutional limits on governmental action apply."
Scalia, who pointed out the violence in a number of children's fairy tales, said that while states have legitimate power to protect children from harm, "that does not include a free-floating power to restrict the ideas to which children may be exposed."
Justices Stephen Breyer and Clarence Thomas dissented from the decision, with Breyer saying it makes no sense to legally block children's access to pornography yet allow them to buy or rent brutally violent video games.
"What sense does it make to forbid selling to a 13-year-old boy a magazine with an image of a nude woman, while protecting the sale to that 13-year-old of an interactive video game in which he actively, but virtually, binds and gags the woman, then tortures and kills her?" Breyer said.
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FACT CHECK: Bachmann emerges as one to watch - for inaccuracies - in GOP presidential race
WASHINGTON (AP) - Michele Bachmann's claim that she has "never gotten a penny" from a family farm that's been subsidized by the government is at odds with her financial disclosure statements. They show tens of thousands in personal income from the operation.
And, on a less-substantive note, she flubbed her hometown history Monday when declaring "John Wayne was from Waterloo, Iowa," and "that's the kind of spirit that I have, too," in running for president.
The actor was born nearly 150 miles away. It was the serial killer John Wayne Gacy Jr. who lived, for a time, in Waterloo.
Those were among the latest examples of how the Minnesota congresswoman has become one to watch - for inaccuracies as well as rising support - in the Republican presidential race.
Bachmann's wildly off-base assertion last month that a NATO airstrike might have killed as many as 30,000 Libyan civilians, her misrepresentations of the health care law, misfires on other aspects of President Barack Obama's record and historical inaccuracies have saddled her with a reputation for uttering populist jibes that don't hold up.
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Muslim woman sues Abercrombie & Fitch, says company fired her for refusing to remove headscarf
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - A former stockroom worker for Abercrombie & Fitch Co. sued the clothing retailer in federal court Monday, saying she was illegally fired after refusing to remove her Muslim headscarf while on the job.
Hani Khan said a manager at the company's Hollister Co. store at the Hillsdale Mall in San Mateo hired her while she was wearing her hijab. The manager said it was OK to wear it as long as it was in company colors, Khan said.
Four months later, the 20-year-old says a district manager and human resources manager asked if she could remove the hijab while working, and she was suspended and then fired for refusing to do so.
It's the latest employment discrimination charge against the company's so-called "look policy," which critics say means images of mostly white, young, athletic-looking people. The company has said it does not tolerate discrimination.
Still, Abercrombie has been the target of numerous discrimination lawsuits, including a federal class action brought by black, Hispanic and Asian employees and job applicants that was settled for $40 million in 2004. The company admitted no wrongdoing, though it was forced to implement new programs and policies to increase diversity.
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New safety rule bans manufacture and sale of drop-side cribs, mandates tougher standards
WASHINGTON (AP) - It's one of the biggest purchases for soon-to-be parents: a crib for baby. Beginning Tuesday, a new generation of cribs, designed to be safer, will be the only ones approved for sale - in stores, online, and even at neighborhood yard sales.
Ushering in one of the most significant changes in child safety in decades, the rule taking effect this week bans the manufacture, sale and resale of drop-side cribs. Drop-sides have a side rail that can be raised and lowered to allow parents to more easily place or lift a baby, but they have been blamed in the deaths of several dozen children.
Another significant part of the new federal standard mandates more rigorous safety tests for children's cribs before they hit the market. In the past, manufacturers were allowed to retighten screws and bolts on a crib in the middle of hardware testing meant to mimic how a child might rattle a crib - by jumping up and down or shaking a rail.
While the tests were intended to simulate a toddler in a crib, they don't mimic the reality of the parent. It's a rare parent who would know when to retighten obscure pieces of hardware on a crib during normal use by a child.
The retightening of screws and bolts during durability tests on cribs ends Tuesday, as part of the new rule approved last year by the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Stronger mattress support systems and crib slats are also a major part of the new testing.
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Elderly woman removes wet diaper so she can finish airport pat-down, nearly misses flight
DESTIN, Fla. (AP) - A gravely ill 95-year-old woman had to remove her wet diaper at an airport so that she could be patted down by security screeners and nearly missed her flight, her daughter said Monday.
During the pat-down, Transportation Security Administration inspectors found a mass on Lena Reppert's upper thigh, her daughter Jean Weber said. The mass was a hard spot on the diaper that had become heavy and concentrated in that place because it was wet. Reppert, who is in a wheelchair, had to be patted down because she couldn't go through a scanning machine, and the TSA agents said they could not search the diaper while she was still wearing it, Weber said.
Reppert couldn't board a June 18 flight from Northwest Florida Regional Airport in Fort Walton Beach to Detroit until she was cleared by security, Weber said. Reppert, who has leukemia and had been living in the Florida Panhandle, was returning to her native Hastings, Mich., where she wants to be buried.
Weber, a waitress, said she was told the diaper would have to be removed so the agents could finish their pat-down. They had not packed any extra diapers in their carry-on because her mother has never needed backups before.
"She had to remove them," Weber said. "She would not be cleared with those Depends on."
