SAN FRANCISCO — A man angry about health care reform allegedly made threatening calls to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, including at least one call in which he got through and spoke to her directly, law enforcement officials said. They said he recited her home address and said if she wanted to see it again, she would not support the health care overhaul bill that since has been enacted. Gregory Lee Giusti, 48, was arrested Wednesday at his San Francisco home, an FBI spokesman said. He would not disclose the charges against Giusti, saying they were under seal until his first appearance before a magistrate today.
D.C.: No bomb on airliner
A Qatari diplomat trying to sneak a smoke in an airplane bathroom sparked a bomb scare Wednesday night on a United Airlines flight from Washington to Denver, with fighter jets scrambled and law enforcement put on high alert, officials said. No explosives were found on the man and officials do not believe he was trying to harm anyone, senior law enforcement officials said. Officials said air marshals aboard the Boeing 757 flight restrained the man and he was questioned. An Arab diplomat identified the man as Mohammed Al-Madidi.
New video of U.S. soldier
The Taliban released a video Wednesday of a man identified as an American soldier captured in Afghanistan last June, showing him pleading for his freedom and to be returned home. In the video, Pfc. Bowe Bergdahl said he wants to return to his family in Idaho and that the war in Afghanistan is not worth the number of lives that have been lost. It is the first he has been seen since the Taliban released a video of him on Christmas Day. The video shows him sporting a beard and doing a few push-ups to demonstrate he’s in good physical condition.
Wyoming: Lawsuit on guns
Officials in Wyoming and Utah plan to enter a lawsuit pending in Montana to argue the federal government lacks authority to regulate firearms that are made and sold in the same state. The attorneys general of Wyoming and Utah said they plan to file a brief in the Montana case this week. It’s possible other states may sign on as well. The states involved have adopted “firearms freedom” laws that seek to exempt guns manufactured and sold in the same state from federal rules.
New York: Sept. 11 remains
Twenty potential human remains found during sifting of newly found World Trade Center debris will undergo further examination in an attempt to link them to missing victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attack, officials said Wednesday. The discoveries made Tuesday at sifting operations at a landfill on Staten Island amount to what appear to be fragments and pieces of bone, a spokeswoman for the office of the city chief medical examiner said. Anthropologists will study the fragments to assess whether they are human and then send them on for further DNA testing, she said.
Colorado: Tax on marijuana
A small town that doesn’t have a medical marijuana dispensary has become the first in Colorado to levy a city tax on pot. Voters in Fruita, a town of about 11,000, decided Tuesday to impose a 5 percent sales tax on marijuana. The town, however, has no dispensaries that sell marijuana, though one application is pending. City leaders said they wanted to be ready with a tax source in case the dispensary opens and requires city resources such as additional police patrol.
Georgia: Cigarette escape
Authorities said an inmate who broke out of jail, then returned after stealing 14 packs of cigarettes, has been sentenced to 20 years. Prosecutors said inmate Harry Jackson, 26, escaped his cell at the Camden County Jail last year and went to the exercise yard to retrieve cigarettes he had expected would be tossed over a fence. They said that when the contraband wasn’t there, Jackson scaled the fence, broke a window at a store and grabbed cigarettes only to be arrested upon his return.
N. Korea: Border sentence
North Korea sentenced a Boston man for crossing into the communist country illegally earlier this year, state media reported. Aijalon Mahli Gomes, 30, was the fourth American detained by North Korea for illegal entry in less than a year. He was sentenced to eight years of “hard labor” and fined 70 million North Korean won. North Korea’s official exchange rate is 100 won to the U.S. dollar.
From Herald news services
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