WASHINGTON – A federal judge has ordered the Pentagon to find and make public by next week any unreleased files about President Bush’s Vietnam-era Air National Guard service to resolve a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by The Associated Press.
The U.S. District judge handed down the order late Wednesday in New York. The lawsuit already has led to the disclosure of previously unreleased flight logs from Bush’s days piloting F-102A fighters and other jets.
Pentagon officials said they plan to complete their search by Monday.
Medicare to cover Alzheimer’s scans
Medicare will start paying for specialized brain scans in some patients to help determine if they have Alzheimer’s disease, the federal agency that runs the reimbursement program announced Thursday. The decision caps a four-year struggle by makers of the technology – known as positron emission tomography, or PET – to gain approval from the Centers for Medicare &Medicaid Services for use in patients suspected of having Alzheimer’s.
Ohio: Deadly blaze ruled an arson
A fast-moving apartment fire that killed 10 people and left more than 50 others homeless has been ruled an arson, the state fire marshal’s office said Thursday. Investigators determined that the fire started in a stairwell at the 24-unit apartment complex outside Columbus, the fire marshal’s office said. The blaze began several hours before dawn on Sunday. Franklin County coroner’s officials said all 10 of the victims died of burns and smoke inhalation. They lived in the same apartment on the third floor.
Maryland: Conjoined twin dies
A girl born with her head fused to that of her twin sister died Thursday in Baltimore, shortly after surgeons separated them. The surviving 1-year-old, Lea Block, was in critical but stable condition. Lea and her sister, Tabea, from Lemgo, Germany, were separated shortly after midnight after more than 18 hours of surgery. Doctors were three-quarters of the way through the surgery when “it became clear we didn’t have very much time and we had to go into emergency mode to separate them,” the lead surgeon said.
Scott Peterson wept Thursday, his chin to his neck, dabbing his eyes with tissues, while jurors at his murder trial in Redwood City looked at autopsy photos of the fetus his wife had been carrying before her death. Images of the fetus were displayed on a large screen on the same day that a forensic pathologist testified the fetus was expelled from Laci’s Peterson’s decaying body after her death. He said no cause of death could be determined for Laci or the couple’s fetus, a boy they planned to name Conner.
Tennessee: Gang-related slaying
Six teenagers were charged with homicide Thursday in the beating death of an eighth-grader whose head was rammed into a high school bathroom wall during a gang-related attack, authorities said. Tarus DeShawn Williams, 14, died at a hospital Tuesday shortly after being found unconscious in the restroom at a Memphis school. While prosecutors said the attack occurred during a gang initiation, the victim’s family said the boy was not a gang member and was probably targeted for refusing to join.
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