Stevens completes trial testimony
A combative Sen. Ted Stevens sparred with prosecutors over his definition of gifts as he concluded his third day of testimony at his corruption trial Monday.
The Senate’s longest-serving Republican, Stevens is charged with lying on Senate financial disclosure forms about $250,000 in renovations and other gifts from oil services contractor VECO Corp.
Stevens has said he wouldn’t even accept a free lunch, much less expensive remodeling services. But prosecutors say he had a history of accepting gifts and omitting them from the financial disclosure forms.
With Stevens’ testimony complete, defense attorneys rested their case. Closing arguments were scheduled for today and jurors were to begin deliberating Wednesday.
LOS ANGELES
Cause of death in jail cell disputed
No evidence of foul play was found in the Oct. 10 jail-cell death of a Japanese businessman accused of a decades-old murder conspiracy involving his wife, a police official said Monday.
Deputy Chief Mark Perez, commander of the Office of Professional Standards, said the investigation is still open. Police have said Kazuyoshi Miura, 61, appeared to have hanged himself less than 24 hours after he was returned to the United States to stand trial for conspiring to murder his wife 27 years ago. But Miura’s attorney Mark Geragos said Sunday that a private pathologist found injuries consistent with homicide.
Geragos said pathologist David Posey found deep tissue injuries that indicated beating. He also said a hematoma on Miura’s larynx could have come from forced choking and that Posey concluded the injury could not have been caused by self-inflicted hanging.
LINCOLN, Neb.
Safe-haven law will be narrowed
Stung by the abandonments of children as old as 17 under Nebraska’s new safe-haven law, the governor and lawmakers agreed Monday to narrow the law’s wording to protect only the parents of newborns from prosecution.
The age cap of 3 days old would change Nebraska’s law from the most lenient to one of the nation’s most restrictive.
At least 18 children, the youngest 22 months and many of them teens, have been abandoned since the law took effect in July. Nebraska’s law doesn’t define the word “child,” allowing anyone to leave a child up to age 18 at a state-licensed hospital without fear of prosecution.
CHANTILLY, Va.
Puppy safe, excited after trip from Iraq
A black puppy decked out in a red, white and blue bandanna jumped out of his crate and wagged his tail at the airport Monday, three flights and two days after leaving Iraq for his new home with a U.S. soldier.
Army Spc. Gwen Beberg, of Minneapolis, says she couldn’t have made it through her 13-month deployment without Ratchet, whom she and another soldier rescued from a burning pile of trash in May.
The dog was transported by Baghdad Pups, run by the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals International.
The military bars troops from caring for pets on duty or taking them home, citing health issues and difficulties in caring for the animals. The U.S. military has said the dog was free to leave but that it could not be responsible for its transport.