In brief: U.S. terror suspect faces charges

Washington – The Pentagon Tuesday announced it had charged a suburban Baltimore high school graduate now at Guantanamo with conspiring to commit terror attacks on U.S. soil and serving as an al-Qaida courier after the 9/11 attacks.

The prosecution of Majid Khan, who was scooped up in Pakistan and disappeared into the CIA’s secret overseas prison network, is the first war court case entirely initiated during the administration of President Barack Obama.

It seeks life imprisonment, not military execution, in a charge sheet that portrays Khan, now 31, as a willing foot soldier for radical Islam. He allegedly recorded a martyr’s message and donned an explosive vest in a 2002 attempt to kill Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf at a mosque. The attack failed because Musharraf never arrived.

Pakistani authorities arrested Khan the next year and turned him over to the United States.

Toxic smoothie results in prison

Salt Lake City – A Utah woman was sentenced Tuesday to consecutive prison terms for spiking a 79-year-old man’s peach smoothie with antifreeze after taking control of his bank accounts.

Vernal’s 8th District Judge Clark McClellan ordered Selena Irene York, 34, to serve three consecutive terms of up to five years each. York pleaded no contest in December to reduced charges of aggravated assault and forgery.

Authorities said York took control of Ed Zurbuchen’s bank accounts after he opened his home to the woman and her daughter. Prosecutors said she stole $10,000 and named herself the beneficiary of Zurbuchen’s life insurance policies.

Zurbuchen was hospitalized for four days in 2008 and is still undergoing liver and kidney testing.

The case stalled until a jilted boyfriend in Oregon alerted police in Vernal – a town in eastern Utah – that York bragged about the poisoning.