WASHINGTON — Former President Bill Clinton’s library, under pressure to quickly cough up reams of documents from Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan’s past, plans a Friday release of about 30,000 pages from her stint as a White House counsel from 1995 to 1996.
Susan Cooper, a spokeswoman for the National Archives and Records Administration, said the staff there is “hoping to get through all the rest of the papers” requested by the Senate Judiciary Committee by Friday. That doesn’t include nearly 80,000 pages of e-mails written by or to Kagan, which will be released later, Cooper added.
Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the top Judiciary Republican, has said he would ask for a delay of the June 28 confirmation-hearing date if senators didn’t have adequate time to review the Clinton-era documents, which total some 160,000 pages.
Lawmakers criticize delays in pilot fatigue regulations
Lawmakers demanded Wednesday that Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood fulfill a promise he made last year to write new rules aimed at preventing pilot fatigue. The top Democratic and Republican members of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and its aviation subcommittee sent LaHood a letter complaining that new rules governing how many hours airlines can require pilots to work haven’t been proposed.
N.Y.: No Empire State Building honor for Mother Teresa
The Empire State Building’s owner says he won’t light the landmark skyscraper for revered nun Mother Teresa in August to celebrate what would have been her 100th birthday because of a policy against honoring individual religious figures. The Catholic League said individual religious figures have, in fact, received the honor. It cited lights honoring the deaths of Cardinal John O’Connor in 2000 and Pope John Paul II in 2005.
Maryland: Abramoff leaves prison for halfway house
Disgraced Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff has been released from prison to a halfway house in the mid-Atlantic region, the Federal Bureau of Prisons said Wednesday. Abramoff, 51, was released Tuesday from the minimum-security federal prison camp in western Maryland where he had been confined since November 2006 for fraud, corruption and conspiracy convictions.
Finland: Shorter people at higher risk for heart problems
Short people have a 50 percent higher risk of having a heart problem or dying from one than tall people, a new study says, though weight, blood pressure and smoking habits remain more important factors. Scientists aren’t sure why short people might be more susceptible. Researchers in Finland looked at 52 previous papers with data on height and heart problems in more than 3 million men and women. On average, short people were under 5 feet 3 inches and tall people were at least 5 feet 9 inches.
Czech Republic: Countries agree on returning real estate stolen during Holocaust
A total of 43 countries struck an nonbinding agreement on Wednesday in Prague on returning Jewish real estate stolen by the Nazis before and during the World War II. The rules urge countries to compensate victims or heirs for buildings that cannot be returned or compensate for properties without heirs by setting up funds. Nazi Germany killed 6 million Jews, three quarters of European Jewry, in an act of systematic genocide known as the Holocaust. The Nazis confiscated or purchased at artificially low prices Jewish assets worth billions of dollars in order to help fuel its war machine.
Brazil: Man had 7 children with daughter, police say
A man in Pinheiro, a remote fishing village, kept his daughter imprisoned for 12 years, raped her repeatedly and had seven children with her, police said Wednesday. Jose Agostinho Pereira, 54, is also accused of abusing a young girl he had with his daughter, who is now 28. Authorities said the children appeared to suffer from malnutrition and could barely communicate with others. Most were unclothed. While the exact ages of the children — four girls and three boys — were not known, police believe they range in age from 2 months old to 12 years old.
From Herald news services
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