Two men arrested in Georgia slayings
Moultrie, Ga. Two men were arrested Tuesday in connection with a string of brutal attacks in south Georgia that targeted immigrant farm workers, authorities said.
The crime spree last week left six workers dead, either shot or bludgeoned with baseball bats. Four other workers were injured and a woman raped.
Stacy Bernard Sims, 19, and Jamie Underwood, 22, are accused of shooting and beating a Hispanic man at a Norman Park trailer park and then raping his wife.
Each is charged with two counts of aggravated assault, one count of aggravated sodomy, one count of rape, armed robbery, burglary and kidnapping, Whittington said.
More charges are likely, especially in neighboring Tift County, where immigrant workers were killed during home invasions at three other trailer parks, Colquitt County Sheriff Al Whittington said.
The pre-dawn attacks Friday sent a chill through south Georgia’s large Hispanic community, which includes thousands of workers who harvest millions of dollars worth of crops, from peaches to Vidalia onions.
Scientist calls space trip ‘dream come true’
Cape Canaveral, Fla. A rich entrepreneur scientist who bought his own ticket to the international space station said from orbit Tuesday that the trip was worth the millions of dollars he paid, and his only fear on launch day was not going.
“I’m having a great time. I mean, this is a dream come true,” Gregory Olsen said at a news conference broadcast from the space station.
“This is my fourth day and I’m really enjoying it,” he added. “Just to look out and see the Earth from about 230 miles up is just great.”
The best part, Olsen said, is “just being here.” As for the reported $20 million he paid for the 10-day trip, “It’s like the price and value argument. This is something I wanted to do, I love doing, so to me, yes, it’s worth the money.”
With his launch aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket on Saturday from Kazakhstan, Olsen became the world’s third paying space tourist. He made his fortune with Sensors Unlimited Inc. of Princeton, N.J., a company that makes devices for fiber-optic communications and infrared imaging.
Olsen arrived at the space station Monday with NASA astronaut William McArthur and Russian cosmonaut Valery Tokarev, who will spend the next six months aboard the orbiting complex. The scientist, who holds a doctorate, will return to Earth early next week with astronaut John Phillips and cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev, who have been in orbit since April.
Superfund program completed 40 sites
Washington The federal Superfund program for the nation’s worst hazardous waste sites spent $507 million and finished cleaning up 40 of them last year.
That leaves 1,237 sites still to go, the Environmental Protection Agency said in a report Tuesday to Congress. Since the program began in 1980, more than 900 toxic messes have been cleaned up.
Superfund cleanup completions have declined to 40 during each of the past two years, compared with 42 completions in 2002 and 47 in 2001. During the preceding Clinton administration, EPA completed an average 76 cleanups a year.
EPA officials have repeatedly cited the increasing size and complexity of the decontamination sites as reasons for completing fewer cleanups.
California won’t pay for Viagra for sex offenders
Sacramento, Calif. California taxpayers will no longer help pay the cost of impotency drugs for registered sex offenders under legislation signed Tuesday by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
The bill amends current law that requires the state’s health insurance program for the poor to help cover the cost of drugs used for treating erectile dysfunction.
Federal support for subsidized Viagra was curtailed earlier this year when a New York state audit found nearly 200 sex offenders benefiting from the program.
Schwarzenegger then asked state agencies to stop prescribing the drugs to sex offenders and asked lawmakers to pass a bill that would outlaw the coverage.