NEWS
IN A FEW
State:
•
PASADENA (AP) -- The Opportunity rover is
on track to roll off its lander and onto
Mars as early as Sunday, just days before
its convalescent twin, Spirit, could resume
its own work exploring the Red Planet, NASA
said Wednesday.
•
ORANGE (AP) -- A Texas inmate, already behind
bars for killing his mother, has admitted
to beating a 75-year-old California woman
to death 38 years ago with the lid of a
pressure cooker after she offered him something
to eat, a police investigator said.
•
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- North Korean leader
Kim Jong-Il was denounced as the world's
worst violator of human rights at the first
public hearing in Los Angeles of the U.S.
Commission on International Religious Freedom.
•
SACRAMENTO (AP) -- The state Senate failed
Wednesday to win a two-thirds majority to
force corporations that move offshore to
pay millions of dollars in taxes to California.
•
SACRAMENTO (AP) -- The state Senate rejected
a bill Wednesday proposing to increase California
lottery payouts to attract new players and
theoretically bring more money to the state's
schools.
•
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- The second trial of
a former police officer accused of assaulting
a handcuffed teenager during a videotaped
arrest closed with prosecutors emphasizing
the video evidence and a defense attorney
saying his client's force was ''not only
necessary, but it was required.''
National:
•
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) -- A federal judge
in Anchorage ordered Exxon Mobil Corp. on
Wednesday to pay $6.75 billion in punitive
damages and interest to thousands of fishermen
and others affected by the 1989 Exxon Valdez
oil spill.
•
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Bush administration
is asking Congress for $760 million next
year to reduce the risk of wildfires by
thinning national forests.
•
SACRAMENTO (AP) -- Indian tribes in California
and Nevada will receive more than $1.3 million
from the federal government to help protect
endangered, threatened and at-risk species
on reservations, the U.S. Interior Department
announced Wednesday.
•
WASHINGTON (AP) -- In the largest crackdown
of its kind, federal officials announced
Wednesday they had broken up a tobacco-smuggling
operation that sometimes disguised cargo
containers of cigarettes as toys and other
goods.
•
BUCKEYE, Ariz. (AP) -- A correctional officer
remained hostage Wednesday in a prison guard
tower in what has become one of the nation's
longest prison hostage standoffs.
International:
•
LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) -- North Korea has agreed
to share missile technology with Nigeria,
the Nigerian government said Wednesday --
a deal that would take the secretive communist
nation's missile business to sub-Saharan
Africa.
•
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) -- The father of
Pakistan's nuclear weapons program and a
top aide had black market contacts that
supplied sensitive technology to Iran and
Libya, and both have failed to account for
funds in their bank accounts, intelligence
officials told The Associated Press on Wednesday.
•
BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) -- The World Health
Organization insisted Wednesday the mass
slaughter of infected poultry is key to
controlling the outbreak of bird flu sweeping
Asia, but Indonesia said it doesn't intend
to order its farmers to kill their birds.
•
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- A suicide car
bomber blew himself up in a taxi next to
British peacekeepers patrolling the Afghan
capital Wednesday, killing one soldier and
wounding four. The attack came as U.S. defense
officials revealed plans for a new offensive
in response to an escalating insurgency.
•
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- A suicide bomber blew
up a van disguised as an ambulance in front
of a hotel Wednesday after speeding through
a security barrier in the heart of Baghdad,
killing three people -- including a South
African -- and injuring 17.
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