WASHINGTON — Solicitor General Elena Kagan won easy Senate confirmation Thursday to the U.S. Supreme Court, where President Barack Obama’s second nominee will make history as three women will serve at the same time on the nine-member court. The 63 to 37 vote, largely along party lines, was no surprise after the 50-year-old former Harvard Law School dean sailed through her Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. Kagan will join Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor for the fall term, which begins on Oct. 4.
Senate OKs new spy boss
The Senate late Thursday confirmed retired Air Force Lt. Gen. James Clapper as the next director of national intelligence, voting him oversight of the nation’s 16 spy agencies. A nearly empty chamber approved Clapper’s nomination by voice vote as senators sought to begin their monthlong August recess. President Barack Obama nominated Clapper, who has served as the Pentagon’s chief intelligence official, to succeed retired Adm. Dennis Blair. Blair stepped down under pressure after clashing with other intelligence officials.
Louisiana: Cement caps well
BP finished pumping fresh cement into its blown-out oil well Thursday as it aimed to seal for good the ruptured pipe that for months spewed crude into the Gulf of Mexico in one of the world’s worst spills. A day before, crews forced a slow torrent of heavy mud down the broken wellhead from ships a mile above to push the crude back to its underground source. The cement was the next step in this so-called “static kill” and is intended to keep the oil from finding its way back out.
Connecticut: Mass killing
A black man who went on a shooting rampage at a beer distributor calmly told a 911 operator that it was “a racist place” and that he “handled the problem” but wished he had shot more people. Omar Thornton called 911 after shooting 10 co-workers — eight fatally — on Tuesday morning at Hartford Distributors Inc. He introduced himself as “the shooter over in Manchester” and said he was hiding in the building, but he would not say where. “You probably want to know the reason why I shot this place up,” he said. “This place is a racist place. … So I took it to my own hands and handled the problem. I wish I could have got more of the people.”
Texas: 30 years for DUI deaths
A Houston father has been sentenced to 30 years in prison for the drunken driving deaths of five children, including three of his own, who drowned after he lost control of his car and veered into a rain-swollen ditch last year. Thirty-four-year-old Chanton Jenkins learned his fate following a sentencing hearing Thursday in a Houston courtroom. Police said Jenkins was driving drunk and using his cell phone in April 2009 when he lost control of his car that was carrying seven passengers.
Virginia: Court-martial set
An Army doctor has been charged with disobeying orders after failing to show up for duty in Afghanistan and questioning whether President Barack Obama has the right to order him there. Lt. Col. Terrence Lakin is scheduled to be arraigned Friday at Fort Belvoir, Va. Lakin said in a YouTube video that he chose to disobey orders and was inviting his own court-martial. He said he wants to see Obama’s birth certificate as proof Obama was born in the U.S., as presidents must be, and thus that the deployment order for Afghanistan is legal.
Pakistan: U.S. aid arrives
U.S. Army choppers flew their first relief missions in the flood-ravaged northwest Thursday, airlifting hundreds of stranded people to safety from a devastated town and distributing emergency aid. Four U.S. Chinook helicopters landed in the resort town of Kalam in the Swat Valley, which has been cut off for more than a week. A U.S. Embassy spokesman said 800 people were evacuated and relief goods distributed. The United States is unpopular in Pakistan, and hopes the missions will improve its image.
New Zealand: Casino ban
A man who won $44,000 playing poker at an Auckland casino was refused the jackpot because he had banned himself from the premises for gambling too much, a newspaper reported today. Sothea Sinn, 28, won the prize playing Caribbean stud poker at Auckland’s Skycity Casino on Wednesday but casino staff refused to pay, saying he was banned at his own request, The Dominion-Post newspaper reported. Sinn said that in 2004 he demanded the casino ban him and his girlfriend because he was gambling too much.
From Herald news services
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