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Lawyers: Criminal probe targets egg magnate, aides
Written by RYAN J. FOLEY, Associated Press   
Wednesday, 16 May 2012 15:48

IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) — Lawyers representing a disgraced egg industry magnate, his son and one of their company's financial officers say their clients are potential targets of a criminal investigation into the 2010 salmonella outbreak that sickened thousands of Americans and led to a massive recall of their products.

In recent documents filed in a civil case in California, defense lawyers for Austin "Jack" DeCoster, son Peter DeCoster and Quality Egg Chief Financial Officer Patsy Larson say a federal grand jury has been meeting in Iowa to determine whether fraud or other crimes were committed in the production and testing of eggs.

Federal officials say at least 1,900 people fell ill — and likely thousands more — during the outbreak that started in July 2010 and was later linked to contaminated eggs supplied by Quality Egg and Hillandale Farms. Both companies voluntarily recalled 550 million eggs nationwide.

Regulators put most of the blame on Quality Egg, which did business as Wright County Egg, based in Galt, Iowa. Quality Egg, controlled by the DeCosters, sold chickens and feed to Hillandale and had more illnesses linked to its eggs. Inspectors discovered dead chickens, insects, rodents, towers of manure and other filthy conditions at both farms, and a congressional investigation found salmonella samples more than 400 times between 2008 and 2010.

Peter Deegan, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Iowa, based in Cedar Rapids, said Wednesday he could not confirm the existence of the investigation. The office's jurisdiction covers the rural area of northern Iowa where the farms are located.

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Police escort school buses after rifle threat
Written by JEFF MARTIN, Associated Press   
Wednesday, 16 May 2012 11:17

ATLANTA (AP) — After a man aimed a rifle at a school bus and dropped a notebook that listed bus numbers, police in an Atlanta suburb are escorting school buses and guarding students at bus stops.

The man fled when witnesses confronted him Monday morning, but police recovered the rifle and notebook he dropped at the scene, just south of Atlanta.

Clayton County police Officer Phong Nguyen says a witness saw the man pointing the rifle at a passing school bus.

County school officials said another witness chased the man but stopped when the suspect fired a second gun at him.

Schools spokesman David Waller says police are shadowing buses from six schools. He says the notebook was found with the weapon.

___

Information from: Clayton News Daily, http://www.news-daily.com


Copyright 2012 The Associated Press.

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Evacs and drills pared near nuke plants
Written by JEFF DONN, AP National Writer   
Wednesday, 16 May 2012 06:17

Without fanfare, the nation's nuclear power regulators have overhauled community emergency planning for the first time in more than three decades, requiring fewer exercises for major accidents and recommending that fewer people be evacuated right away.

The revamp, the first since the program began after Three Mile Island in 1979, also eliminates a requirement that local responders always practice for a release of radiation.

At least four years in the works, the changes appear to clash with more recent lessons of last year's reactor crisis in Japan.

Under the new rules, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which run the program together, have added one new exercise: More than a decade after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, state and community police will now take part in exercises that prepare for a possible assault on their local plant.

Still, some emergency officials say this new exercise doesn't go far enough.

And some view as downright bizarre the idea that communities will now periodically run emergency scenarios without practicing for any significant release of radiation.

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Obama's gay marriage shift is calculated move
Written by CHARLES BABINGTON Associated Press   
Wednesday, 16 May 2012 09:45
Public opinion about gay marriage has changed so rapidly that President Barack Obama's historic embrace of it may pose as many political risks to Republicans as to the president and his fellow Democrats.
The president's dramatic shift on the issue - a watershed moment in U.S. politics, even if many people felt it was inevitable - is the latest sign that Democratic hopes increasingly rest on younger, college-educated and largely urban voters, whose lifestyles are shaped by social mobility more than religious and community traditions. Many young adults find the notion of discriminating against gays and lesbians as incomprehensible as their parents' and grandparents' accounts of living through racial segregation.
Yet same-sex marriage remains provocative in some places, including once-reliably Republican states such as North Carolina, where Obama won a narrow but stunning victory in 2008. Only hours before his announcement on ABC News, North Carolina voters turned out in huge numbers to approve a constitutional ban on gay marriage.
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Ratko Mladic's genocide trial gets under way
Written by MIKE CORDER, Associated Press   
Wednesday, 16 May 2012 06:16

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — Twenty years after his troops began brutally ethnically cleansing Bosnian towns and villages of non-Serbs, Gen. Ratko Mladic went on trial Wednesday at the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal accused of 11 counts of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.

The ailing 70-year-old Mladic's appearance at the U.N. court war crimes tribunal marked the end of a long wait for justice to survivors of the 1992-95 war that left some 100,000 people dead. The trial is also a landmark for the U.N. court and international justice — Mladic is the last suspect from the Bosnian war to go on trial here.

Mladic, in a suit and tie and looking healthier than at previous pretrial hearings, gave a thumbs-up and clapped to supporters in the court's public gallery as the trial got under way Wednesday. He occasionally wrote notes and showed no emotion as prosecutors began outlining his alleged crimes.

Munira Subasic, who lost 22 family members in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, was among a group of relatives of war dead in the courtroom's public gallery to face Mladic.

The 65-year-old said she wanted to look him in the eye "and ask him if he will repent for what he did."

One woman in the public gallery called him a "vulture" as prosecutors began two days of laying out their case for judges.

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