SanLuisObispo.com: Nation

Fort Hood shooting suspect to remain hospitalized

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 16:11 PST

A military magistrate has ruled that the Army psychiatrist charged in one of the worst mass shootings on a U.S. military base will be held until trial.

For now, Maj. Nidal Hasan will stay in a military hospital in San Antonio.

The magistrate made that decision Saturday during a hearing in Hasan's hospital room. Hasan is recovering from the Nov. 5 shooting at Fort Hood, Texas, that killed 13 and wounded more than two dozen.

Calif. fisherman arrested in sea lion shooting

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 16:06 PST

Authorities arrested a Sacramento fisherman Saturday in connection to shooting a sea lion in the head.

California game wardens said they arrested Larry Allen Legans, 43, on misdemeanor charges of animal cruelty, negligent discharge of a firearm, and take of a marine mammal. Legans told authorities he grew tired of competing with the protected animals so he fired his 12-gauge shotgun at the sea lion, injuring the creature.

"He said he was tired of watching sea lions take his fish," said Warden Patrick Foy.

5 Long Beach students arrested in alleged groping

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 14:01 PST

Authorities say five male students have been arrested on suspicion of sexual battery after two ninth-grade girls were attacked at a Long Beach high school.

Long Beach Police Lt. Ty Hatfield says one of the victims told Poly High School officials they were groped on their breasts and buttocks during a lunch break Tuesday.

The five freshman boys were arrested separately throughout the week as the investigation into the assault progressed.

Suspicious note and package found at Fort Benning

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 12:46 PST

A Fort Benning spokesman says Army officials are investigating whether a suspicious note and package found at the west Georgia post is a viable threat.

Bob Purtiman says a soldier found the note and package Thursday morning in an outdoor gazebo. The soldier immediately told a supervisor, who called 911.

Purtiman would not say what was in the note or what was in the package.

Ex-Air Force nurse acquitted of killing patients

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 16:06 PST

By By PAUL J. WEBER -- A court martial acquitted a former military nurse of murder Saturday after he was accused of giving lethal doses of painkillers to hasten the deaths of three terminally ill patients at the Air Force's largest hospital.

Capt. Michael Fontana, wearing his Air Force uniform, showed no emotion as a military judge cleared him of three counts of murder, then collapsed into the arms of weeping family members inside a Lackland Air Force Base courtroom.

Military prosecutors had painted Fontana as a rogue and arrogant nurse who pumped patients full of fentanyl and morphine when they were not "dying quick enough." After the ruling, Fontana said he never second-guessed his treatment or dosages.

A bad month in Afghanistan rippled across the US

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 11:11 PST

By By SHARON COHEN -- Every afternoon, seven days a week, Ed Epley has a 5 p.m. appointment with the war.

He pulls a protest sign from his maroon 1961 Volkswagen van - he has 30 to 40 stashed inside - and joins a one-hour peace vigil at the Benton County courthouse in Corvallis, Ore. Epley has been doing this, day in and day out, since the U.S. launched its first air strikes on Afghanistan on Oct. 7, 2001.

"I really don't look at it as a job, it's just part of the daily task of being a citizen," says the 73-year-old retiree.

More Americans expected to travel for Thanksgiving

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 13:21 PST

By By NAFEESA SYEED -- The number of Americans traveling away from home for Thanksgiving will be up only slightly this year from 2008, according to a report from the AAA auto club.

The group, which surveyed 1,350 households, said there will be about 33.2 million people traveling by car this year - a 2.1 percent increase from last year.

But there will be a 6.7 percent decrease in the number of air travelers, totaling 2.3 million this year, continuing a decade-long decline of Thanksgiving air travel.

EPA: Uranium from polluted mine in Nev. wells

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 15:41 PST

By By SCOTT SONNER -- Peggy Pauly lives in a robin-egg blue, two-story house not far from acres of onion fields that make the northern Nevada air smell sweet at harvest time.

But she can look through the window from her kitchen table, just past her backyard with its swingset and pet llama, and see an ominous sign on a neighboring fence: "Danger: Uranium Mine."

For almost a decade, people who make their homes in this rural community in the Mason Valley 65 miles southeast of Reno have blamed that enormous abandoned mine for the high levels of uranium in their water wells.

NC man gets life in prison for woman's fatal scare

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 09:46 PST

A man will spend the rest of his life in prison after he was found guilty in what prosecutors said was a case of scaring a 79-year-old North Carolina grandmother to death.

Multiple media outlets reported a federal jury found 21-year-old Larry Whitfield not guilty of murder Friday in the death of Mary Parnell last year. But they did find him guilty of causing her death by kidnapping her, and that carries an automatic life sentence.

Prosecutors say Whitfield was looking for somewhere to hide after a failed bank robbery attempt in Gastonia in September 2008 when he broke into Parnell's home.

Mental health cases tax police, emergency workers

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 10:36 PST

By By LISA RATHKE -- Police found him sitting on the floor of his old apartment near a bucket of urine, still dressed in his hospital gown.

The apartment had been condemned for the squalor - food on the floor, flies - and his smoking in bed. But the mentally ill man, just released from the hospital, had managed to get back in. For the second time in four days, he was taken by ambulance to the hospital.

Three firefighters, a battalion chief, the police chief, two police officers, a code enforcement person and a housing official responded, and finally, an ambulance crew - at a cost of thousands of dollars, Police Chief Michael Schirling said.

Report finds wide disparities in gifted education

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 09:11 PST

By By DORIE TURNER -- When Liz Fitzgerald realized her son and daughter were forced to read books in math class while the other children caught up, she had them moved into gifted classes at their suburban Atlanta elementary school.

Just 100 miles down the road in Taliaferro County, that wouldn't have been an option. All the gifted classes were canceled because of budget cuts.

"If they didn't have it, they would get bored and distracted easily," said Fitzgerald, whose children are 14 and 12. "It just wouldn't be challenging."

AP reporter caught up in Stalin family's agony

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 07:51 PST

By By LARRY HEINZERLING -- Newly arrived in Moscow on his first foreign assignment, Associated Press correspondent George Krimsky sensed he had a sensational Cold War scoop on his hands and he pounced.

The story was the possible defection to the United States of the grandson of Josef Stalin, the notorious Communist dictator and World War II hero of the Soviet Union.

The story's potential was all the more dramatic because the grandson's mother, Stalin's only daughter, had herself defected in 1967 and settled in the U.S., dealing the Kremlin a very public and bitter humiliation.

Resort island reels after deadly attack by gunman

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 05:11 PST

By By GEMMA CASAS -- The gunman who carried out Saipan's most violent attack in recent memory ended his life on the same rocky cliffs where numerous Japanese leapt to their deaths to avoid capture by U.S. troops during World War II.

Police and witness say that after the attacker went on a shooting rampage Friday that left four dead, he parked his van and walked to edge of Banzai Cliff. But instead of jumping, the gunman shot himself.

Six people were also wounded in the violence that left this usually tranquil tourist island reeling and shaken.

Postal Service to resume North Pole Santa letters

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 06:36 PST

By By RACHEL D'ORO -- Wide-eyed children around the world will be hearing from Santa's "elves" at the North Pole after all.

During Christmas seasons for decades, these dedicated elves responded to thousands of letters addressed to "Santa Claus, North Pole."

All that was ending with a U.S. Postal Service decision to discontinue the program based in the small Alaskan town amid privacy concerns.

Levin: could be more e-mails from Ft. Hood suspect

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 05:01 PST

By By PAMELA HESS and ANNE GEARAN -- WASHINGTON - The government intercepted at least 18 e-mails between the alleged Fort Hood gunman and a radical Muslim cleric, and a key senator says there could be more communications that might have tipped off law enforcement or military officials.

Federal investigators say they intercepted the messages between the suspect, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, and Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical American-born cleric. They were passed along to two Joint Terrorism Task Force cells led by the FBI, but a senior defense official said no one at the Defense Department knew about the messages until after the shootings. The official spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss intelligence procedures.

Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., said Friday after a briefing from Pentagon and Army officials that his committee will investigate how those and other e-mails involving Hasan were handled and why the U.S. military was not made aware of them before the Nov. 5 shooting.

Car strikes crowd outside Ala. school, 1 killed

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 21:01 PST

Police say a woman has died after being struck along with nine children by a car outside an Alabama middle school.

The nine children were injured in the accident Friday afternoon in Fairfield, about eight miles southwest of Birmingham. Three of the injured were listed in fair to serious condition at Children's Hospital in Birmingham.

Fairfield Police Sgt. Matthew Romei says 46-year-old Debrah Johnson died after undergoing surgery Friday night.