Jackson’s jury chosen quickly

Santa Maria, Calif. Well ahead of schedule, a jury was selected Wednesday to decide Michael Jackson’s fate on charges that he molested a teenage boy at his Neverland Ranch.

“We have a jury,” Superior Court Judge Rodney S. Melville announced.

The panel consists of four men and eight women, ranging in age from 20 to 79.

After the jury was sworn in, attorneys moved on to the selection of eight alternate jurors.

Jury selection had been expected to last several weeks, but took only five court days, which were interrupted by a one-week break due to the death of an attorney’s sister and another one-week break because Jackson was hospitalized with flu-like symptoms.

Selection moved at a fast pace when the judge imposed tight time limits on how long each prospective juror could be questioned.

Among the jurors were a woman who said her grandson was required to register as a sexual offender because of a crime; a 20-year-old man who likes “The Simpsons” TV show; and a man who likes Western art and country music.

Civil War veterans moved from stadium

Charleston, S.C. The remains of 21 Confederate soldiers that were recovered from beneath the stands of a military college’s football stadium will be reburied next month.

Hundreds of soldiers and civilians were buried during the Civil War on the land where The Citadel’s stadium now stands.

The city meant to allow the graves to be moved in 1948, when the stadium was built, but because of a clerical error the city’s letter only allowed the headstones to be moved.

Civil War re-enactors began looking for the graves of lost Confederates in the 1990s. The remains of about 40 Civil War soldiers have been recovered and reburied.

The latest group of remains was found last June. None of the bodies has been identified.

Burial in a cemetery for the 21 soldiers is set for March 5.

The recovered remains of about 350 civilians remain in storage until the college decides where they should be reburied. Officials are considering reburying them on the stadium’s grounds and erecting a monument.

Prison escapee finds freedom difficult

Riga, Latvia Finding life on the run as restrictive as life behind bars, a Latvian man who escaped from a minimum-security prison five years ago showed up at the prison doorstep asking to be let back in.

Sergei M. – prison officials would not give his full name – turned himself in Monday at the Vecumnieki penitentiary, 31 miles southeast of the capital, Riga, where he had escaped in 1999 with 10 months left on his seven-year burglary sentence.

Karlis Serzants, a spokesman for the Latvian prison administration, said Tuesday that Sergei had been living in Riga with his girlfriend and had worked illegally at various jobs, but was finding it hard to find work and evade the authorities.

Sergei will serve the remaining 10 months of his burglary sentence and could face as long as three more years for his escape, Serzants said.

Swimming pool uprooted by thieves

Oslo, Norway A Norwegian family’s swimming pool wasn’t just bolted down, it was in the ground. But that wasn’t an impediment to a band of determined thieves.

When the Nicolaysen family visited their mountain cabin over the weekend, they discovered a big hole in the yard in place of the swimming pool that had been installed 20 years ago.

“This can’t be, we thought,” Arild Nicolaysen told radio NRK. “We didn’t think it was possible. No one can steal a swimming pool.”

Evidently, someone did.

At some point since early November, when the family closed up the cabin for the winter, their 16-foot-diameter pool and all its equipment was uprooted and stolen.

“It must have been a terrible job to disassemble such a big pool. There is a steel lining all the way around, plus there is a plastic liner and then there was a skimming system, a filter system and a lot of big hoses, and pipes,” said Brit Nicolaysen, who owns the cabin with her husband.