Nation in brief: Senate panel votes for better mileage
A Senate committee approved a bill requiring new cars and trucks to average 35 miles per gallon by 2020 on Tuesday, with an expectation that the full Senate could vote on the plan as soon as June.
While automakers and the United Auto Workers hotly oppose the bill, its chance of passing appears high, with Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, saying it had “substantial support” among all senators. Congress hasn’t passed a fuel economy increase since 1975.
Automakers contend the bill sets fuel economy standards that aren’t achievable with known technology, and could cost them tens of billions of dollars to meet. Yet environmental groups have said the compromise version of the bill contains too many loopholes that could allow automakers to miss the 35 mpg target.
EL PASO, Texas
Cuban militant’s statement tossed
A federal judge on Tuesday threw out an indictment accusing a Cuban militant of lying to immigration authorities, saying the government manipulated Luis Posada Carriles’ statement to investigators.
U.S. District Judge Kathleen Cardone said the interpretation of the April 2006 interview “is so inaccurate as to render it unreliable as evidence of defendant’s actual statement.”
Authorities said he confessed to sneaking across the Mexican border into Texas.
Posada, a 79-year-old former CIA operative and fierce opponent of Fidel Castro, was scheduled to stand trial next week in Texas on immigration fraud charges.
He was released last month from jail where he had been held since his May 2005 arrest. An immigration judge has ruled that Posada could not be deported to Cuba, where he was born, or Venezuela, where he is a naturalized citizen, because of fears that he could be tortured.
NEW PORT RICHEY, Fla.
Police say woman forced to use crack
A woman forced an 83-year-old housemate to smoke crack cocaine so she could steal personal information to get a credit card and run up more than $3,000 in charges, authorities said.
Pasco County sheriff’s investigators accused Theresa M. Stanley-Morgan, 41, of getting the older woman to smoke the drug at least twice to make it easier to exploit her financially.
Stanley-Morgan admitted to investigators that she used Shirley Hathaway’s name, birth date and Social Security number to open the account, a sheriff’s report said.