Nation, World Briefs: Blagojevich lawyers get impeachment summons
Published 10:14 pm Wednesday, January 14, 2009
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — Lawyers for Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich have received a summons for his impeachment trial from the state Senate. A Blagojevich (bluh-GOY’-uh-vich) spokeswoman said the governor’s legal team accepted the summons from the Illinois Senate’s sergeant-at-arms Wednesday. The senators were sworn in as jurors earlier by the chief justice of the Illinois Supreme Court. They also heard the official impeachment charges from the House. The House impeached Blagojevich last week. Now the Senate will decide whether to convict and oust him.
Texas: New office space for Bush
A federal agency will provide President George Bush with an 8,000-square-foot office near his affluent Dallas neighborhood when he leaves the White House and returns to Texas. Officials with the General Services Administration said the lease on the $311,000-per-year space begins this summer. The lease will run 10 years. Until that office is ready, Bush will work from a 5,300-square-foot office. The federal agency will pay for both offices.
Minnesota: Senate race drags on
Minnesota’s disputed Senate election would extend well into February and probably beyond if a three-judge panel hearing a lawsuit by Republican Norm Coleman adopts his proposed trial schedule. In a filing Wednesday, Coleman recommends conducting the trial in stages. He said the case would proceed to the next step only if Coleman gains “a sufficient number of votes” to cut into Democrat Al Franken’s 225-vote lead after the recent statewide recount of 2.9 million ballots. A spokesman for Franken said he will submit his own, shorter time line on Thursday.
D.C.: ‘God’ sparks atheist lawsuit
President-elect Barack Obama wants to conclude his inaugural oath with the words “so help me God,” but a group of atheists plan to go in front of a federal judge in hopes of stopping him. California atheist Michael Newdow sued Chief Justice John Roberts in federal court in hopes of getting an injunction against the inclusion of those words in the inaugural oath. Newdow and other atheists and agnostics also want to stop the use of prayers in the inaugural celebration.
Free Gitmo inmate, judge orders
A federal judge on Wednesday ordered the military to release one of its first Guantanamo Bay detainees, a 21-year-old man who has been detained and accused of being a terrorist since he was 14. Mohammed el Gharani, who is of Chadian nationality but had lived in Saudi Arabia, should be released from the U.S. prison in Cuba “forthwith,” a U.S. District judge said in a ruling from the bench. El Gharani could be on his way home to his family in a few weeks, his lawyer said.
California: Sentence for adultery
A married Marine gunnery sergeant was sentenced Tuesday to 90 days in the brig after pleading guilty to committing adultery with the widow of a Marine killed three weeks earlier in Afghanistan. Gunnery Sgt. Stephen Kuehler, a recruiter in St. Louis, admitted to having sex with the widow of Pvt. Michael Patton. Kuehler had recruited Patton into the Marine Corps. After Patton, 19, was killed in June by a roadside bomb, Kuehler attended his funeral in Fenton, Mo., and befriended his widow, Amy.
Venezuela: No Israeli relations
Venezuela broke off diplomatic relations with Israel on Wednesday to protest its military offensive in Gaza, the foreign ministry announced. The decision by President Hugo Chavez’s socialist government comes about a week after it expelled the Israeli ambassador in Caracas, Shlomo Cohen, and seven embassy staff members to protest the Jewish state’s actions in Gaza. Venezuela “has decided to break off diplomatic relations with the state of Israel given the inhumane persecution of the Palestinian people,” the foreign ministry said Wednesday.
Mexico: Olmec carvings stained
Mexico is restoring nearly two dozen pre-Hispanic Olmec sculptures damaged by an American woman and two Mexican men. The three were arrested Sunday for allegedly throwing a grape juice-and-oil mixture on the statues as part of a bizarre religious act. The mixture left dark stains on the porous stone carvings in the Gulf state of Tabasco. The Olmecs are referred to as the “mother culture” of the region that later saw the rise of the Mayas and Aztecs. The flat-faced, carved heads are often considered the most emblematic pieces of Olmec art.
New Zealand: Facebook cracks case
Police nabbed a burglar after posting security camera footage of him trying to crack a bar’s safe on the Internet networking site Facebook. Police said it was New Zealand’s first such Facebook arrest and said they would use the site again to fight crime, as law enforcement officials and lawyers increasingly turn to online networks for purposes other than their original ones, to provide social interaction. “Facebook was very, very handy, and it’s a good little tool,” a Queenstown police officer said Thursday.
From Herald news services
