In brief: Smart jury selection begins

SALT LAKE CITY – Nearly every Utah juror questioned on the first day of the Elizabeth Smart kidnapping trial said they knew about the case and believed the man charged was likely responsible.

Jury selection began Monday in U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City for the trial of Brian David Mitchell, 57, on charges of kidnapping and unlawful transportation of a minor. He faces a life sentence.

Of the 17 potential jurors questioned Monday, all said they had seen media coverage of the case and could recite its various details – from Smart’s 2002 knifepoint abduction, to alleged sexual abuses she suffered during nine months of captivity, to her recovery after being found with Mitchell in 2003.

CIA officers punished

WASHINGTON – In a footnote to a tragic mistake, the CIA revealed Monday that 16 retired and current officers were given administrative punishments for their role in Peru’s 2001 shootdown of a plane that killed two innocent Americans.

American missionary Veronica Bowers, 35, and her infant daughter were killed when their plane was shot down after it was wrongly identified by the Peruvian air force as carrying drugs.

Bowers’ plane was one of 15 small civilian aircraft shot down between 1995 and 2001 as part of the CIA’s Airbridge Denial Program, a counternarcotics program “designed to interrupt the transport of coca paste by civil aircraft from Peru to Colombia,” according to a 2008 CIA inspector general report.

Prosthetic leg is missing girl’s

HICKORY, N.C. – A prosthetic leg found in western North Carolina belonged to a 10-year-old girl who has been missing for weeks, police said Monday.

The Hickory Police Department said the artificial left leg belonged to Zahra Baker, who lost her own leg to bone cancer. Police said the serial number on the leg recovered Wednesday matched the girl’s medical records.

Zahra’s father reported her missing Oct. 9. Authorities believe she is dead.

Thatcher home from hospital

LONDON – Former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher has returned home following two weeks in the hospital, managing a smile and a wave to reporters Monday.

The Conservative Party icon fell ill with the flu last month. Spokesman Timothy Bell said Thatcher had been given the all-clear by her doctors.

Sick boy’s mother charged

PITTSBURGH – A mother visiting her terminally ill son at a Pennsylvania hospital has been accused of injecting herself with his drugs.

Authorities say Karen Remsing, 42, of Vancouver, Wash., was visiting her 15-year-old son at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh when she unhooked his intravenous line, siphoned out a sedative using a syringe and injected herself with it. They say she then reconnected the IV line and left in the tube an air bubble that put her son in further danger.

Remsing was charged with child endangerment, reckless endangerment, theft, criminal mischief and committing prohibitive acts including possession of the prescription medication.