MORGANTON, Ga. — A Florida-based Navy plane just missed a house and crashed in dense woods in north Georgia on Monday, killing three crew members, and authorities were looking for a fourth person believed to be aboard, officials said.
Naval Air Station Pensacola spokesman Harry White said authorities have not confirmed whether the pilot was among those killed when a T-39N training plane went down at 4:26 p.m. No one on the ground was injured, he said.
California: No bail in threats
A judge refused Monday to release a man accused of making threatening phone calls to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi over her support of health care reform. “If he is released, there a danger he will do what he threatened to do,” U.S. Magistrate Judge Bernard Zimmerman said about defendant Gregory Lee Giusti after a 20-minute hearing in federal court. Prosecutors said Giusti made at least 48 calls to the San Francisco and Washington, D.C., offices of Pelosi between Feb. 6 and March 25.
Crash kills 4 children
A pickup truck spun out of control on a rain-slicked freeway north of Los Angeles, causing a pileup that killed five people — four of them children — and injured six others, the California Highway Patrol said Monday. The three-car crash in the Newhall Pass closed the southbound lanes of Interstate 5 for about nine hours and came at the beginning of a storm that swept through Central and Southern California late in the season, dumping nearly an inch of rain over downtown.
New York: No settlement
The judge overseeing thousands of health lawsuits from Ground Zero workers Monday gave what appeared to be a pessimistic assessment of efforts to meet his demands for improvement of a proposed settlement of up to $657 million, saying there has been little progress. U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein, who last month demanded more money and smaller legal fees for workers as a condition of his approving the deal, made the comments to a roomful of lawyers attending a meeting on how to handle thousands of cases that have been stayed during settlement talks. “No one’s reported any progress,” Hellerstein said. “I have no idea what’s going on.”
Illinois: Apollo 13 celebrated
Surviving Apollo 13 astronauts and several flight directors reunited on Monday to remember a failed moon mission 40 years ago this week that they managed to turn into one of the greatest triumphs in the history of space exploration.
Nebraska: Abortion screening
Nebraska could become the first state to require doctors to screen women for possible mental and physical problems before performing abortions under a bill that received final approval from the nonpartisan Legislature on Monday. Republican Gov. Dave Heineman’s office said Monday he will sign the bill today, along with another groundbreaking abortion measure lawmakers are expected to pass then. That bill would ban abortions after 20 weeks based on the assertion that fetuses feel pain. Both bills are likely to be challenged in court.
Georgia: Health care law
Georgia’s insurance commissioner will keep the state out of the first phase of a new federal health care law that would offer subsidized premiums to people with health problems. In a letter obtained Monday by The Associated Press, Republican John Oxendine said Georgia should not take part in the creation of an insurance pool that would help high-risk people who have been uninsured for at least six months. Federal health officials said they will run a coverage program in the state if Georgia doesn’t take part.
Brazil: Guilty of murder
A Brazilian rancher accused of ordering the murder of U.S. nun and Amazon defender Dorothy Stang has been found guilty and sentenced to 30 years in prison.Stang was a Dayton, Ohio, native who worked for three decades to preserve the rain forest and defend poor settlers’ land rights.
More risk of mudslides
The threat of new mudslides forced officials to begin evicting 2,600 families from at-risk areas Monday as they embarked on a slum demolition program on Rio de Janeiro’s hills. The danger also kept a shutdown in place for the popular trolley ride that carries tourists up a mountain to the famed Christ the Redeemer statue.
Associated Press
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