A moderate earthquake rattles southern Alaska
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- A moderate earthquake and two aftershocks rattled far southern Alaska early Thursday, but little damage was immediately reported, said Bruce Turner of the West Coast and Alaska Tsunami Warning Center.The quake and two aftershocks shook the state capital Juneau and the towns of Sitka, Hoonah and Gustavus, but Turner said there were few immediate reports of damage.
Heart attack doesn't prevent truck's delivery to food bank
PONTIAC, Mich. (AP) -- A truck driver who suffered a heart attack while making a food-bank delivery took steps to ensure that the food would be delivered before he was taken to a hospital.
Jim Callison, 63, brought a semitruck of fresh produce from Springfield, Ohio, to the Oakland County Food Bank Wednesday morning.
Sensing the onset of a heart attack, he called 911 and was rushed to the hospital. Before he left, he placed the keys to his truck in the ignition so that it could be unloaded and moved.
Oakland County Food Bank Executive Director Helen Kozlowski expressed appreciation that delivery operations could proceed.
Airline pays $50,000 penalty over security screenings
WASHINGTON (AP) -- United Airlines has agreed to pay a $50,000 civil penalty after the government found the airline violated federal laws by requiring passengers in wheelchairs to undergo security screenings in private rooms.
Transportation Secretary Rodney E. Slater said Wednesday he has instructed his department to work with the Federal Aviation Administration to inform other airlines that under department rules disabled travelers have the same rights as other passengers to choose public security screenings.
United has corrected its security procedures, the department said.
Rap mogul's protege faces attempted murder charge
NEW YORK (AP) -- A protege of Sean "Puffy" Combs is facing an attempted murder charge in connection with a nightclub shooting last month.
Jamal "Shyne" Barrow, 21, was part of the rap mogul's entourage and allegedly wounded three people at Club NY after a dispute, authorities said. He was indicted Wednesday.
Combs is charged with illegal possession of a gun. Prosecutors declined to charge his girlfriend, actress Jennifer Lopez, who was with Combs that night.
Besides attempted murder, Barrow is charged with assault, reckless endangerment and criminal possession of a weapon. The attempted murder charge is punishable by up to 25 years in prison.
Barrow's lawyer, Murray Richman, said his client will fight the charges in court.
Suspect in Kansas standoff faces robbery, gun charges
KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) -- The woman arrested last week after an eight-hour standoff at a bank outside Kansas City has been indicted on robbery and gun charges by a federal grand jury.
The government says Pheng "Nicki" Soumpholphakdy-Siriboury, 23, told investigators she tried to rob the bank to solve her financial problems.
She was charged Wednesday with attempted bank robbery, using a gun in a violent crime and taking hostages in the New Year's Eve incident at a Bank of America branch in the suburb of Olathe.
She is accused of entering the bank carrying a pistol and ordering tellers to put money into a duffel bag. After she saw police outside, she took six bank employees hostage, authorities said.
She faces a maximum penalty of up to life in prison.
Mother gets jail sentence for hitting 6th-grade teacher
NEW YORK (AP) -- A woman who assaulted her daughter's sixth-grade teacher for giving the girl bad grades has been sentenced to two months in jail.
Brenda Smith, 45, could have faced up to a year in jail and a $1,000 fine for the attack on Jamina Clay, 22, last June.
Smith was convicted of third-degree assault in November. Authorities say she attacked Clay because the teacher had given her daughter Nicole, then 12, several unsatisfactory grades on her report card.
Prosecutors say Smith and her daughter were arguing with Clay at the school when Smith punched Clay in the back and held her from behind as her daughter scratched Clay's face and pulled her hair.
Mississippi lawmakers bar governor from speaking
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) -- Mississippi lawmakers have snubbed Gov. Kirk Fordice, barring him from making a final address to the Legislature.
Fordice, who cannot seek a third term because of term limits, had lashed out at legislators in his 1999 state-of-the-state address amid turmoil over his very public affair with a childhood sweetheart.
A Senate-drawn resolution that would have allowed the Republican to speak to a joint session of the Legislature died Wednesday for lack of action in the House.
"He might ask for forgiveness for some things he's done, or he might give us a good cussing out," said Rep. Charlie Smith, an independent. "I think he deserves respect, whether he's controversial or not."
Man who raped, suffocated elderly woman is executed
McALESTER, Okla. (AP) -- A man who raped and suffocated a 76-year-old woman in her Oklahoma City apartment in 1981 was executed by injection early Thursday.
Malcolm Rent Johnson, 41, was pronounced dead at 12:13 a.m., becoming the first inmate executed in the United States this year.
Johnson had been on death row for almost 18 years after being convicted of killing Ura Alma Thompson.
Oklahoma County District Attorney Bob Macy, who prosecuted Johnson, said Johnson was identified in several rapes or attempted rapes involving elderly women. He said Johnson would follow elderly women to their homes and brutalize them.
Last month, Johnson opted not to go before the state clemency board to try to have his sentence commuted.
U.S. economist who studied productivity in USSR dies
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Walter Galenson, an economist who made the first serious Western attempt to measure labor productivity in the former Soviet Union, died here Dec. 30 at age 85.
Galenson wrote or edited 28 books, including a 1954 study comparing labor productivity in the Soviet Union and the United States.
His latest, published in 1998, was "The World's Strongest Trade Unions," about Scandinavian unions.