Informer says pair unaware of plot

The government’s star witness in the case against five men accused of plotting an attack on soldiers at the Army’s Fort Dix said two of the men “had nothing to do” with the scheme.

Mahmoud Omar, a paid FBI informant who made hundreds of secret recordings of the men over more than a year, told jurors Monday that one defendant – Mohamad Shnewer – said all five were on board with the alleged plot.

But two – brothers Dritan “Tony” Duka and Shain “Shaheen” Duka – knew nothing about it when Omar later asked them during an August 2006 fishing trip with them, he testified under cross-examination.

The five men are charged with conspiracy to kill military personnel, attempted murder and weapons offenses. If convicted, they could face life in prison.

Boston

Harvard considers spending cuts

Harvard University is considering spending cuts because the economic slowdown may reduce federal grants and the school’s substantial endowment, President Drew Faust said Monday.

Harvard’s endowment posted an 8.6 percent return and grew to $36.9 billion in the fiscal year that ended June 30. The school, however, lost 12.7 percent on its U.S. stock portfolio and 12.1 percent on its foreign equity portfolio during that time.

Still, Faust warned in an e-mail to faculty, staff and students that “we must recognize that Harvard is not invulnerable to the seismic financial shocks in the larger world. Our own economic landscape has been significantly altered.”

WASHINGTON

Lost e-mails case can move forward

A federal judge on Monday ruled against the Bush administration in a court battle over the White House’s problem-plagued e-mail system.

U.S. District Judge Henry Kennedy ruled that two private groups may pursue their case as they press the government to recover millions of possibly missing electronic messages.

Kennedy rejected the government’s request to throw out the lawsuits filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and the National Security Archive.

The government had argued that the courts did not have the authority to order the White House to retrieve any missing e-mails.

A White House document obtained in August says the White House is missing as many as 225 days of e-mail dating to 2003.