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Man
found innocent after daughter killed by python
GREENSBURG,
Pa. (AP) — A man whose 8-year-old daughter was squeezed to
death by the family’s 11-foot python was found innocent Thursday
of involuntary manslaughter but guilty of endangering the girl’s
welfare.
Robert
D. Mountain, 31, was negligent but not grossly reckless in leaving
Amber Mountain home alone with the snake last August, Judge Richard
McCormick Jr. ruled in the non-jury trial.
Mountain
could get up to five years in prison.
Amber
was found unconscious on the kitchen floor with the python, named
Moe, coiled around her body. She died two days later at hospital
from compression of the head and neck.
Prosecutor
Wayne Gongaware had argued that what the girl’s father did
was “worse than leaving a child alone with a loaded gun. A
gun cannot slither down the stairs toward a vulnerable child.”
Dog
mauling trial put on hold because of credibility
LOS
ANGELES (AP) — The judge in the San Francisco dog mauling trial
said Thursday he would hold a hearing on whether a defense attorney
violated a court order by attacking the credibility of the victim’s
domestic partner during a TV interview.
The
issue arose outside the presence of the jury, which heard testimony
from defense witnesses about pleasant encounters with the defendants’
two dogs in the months before Diane Whipple’s Jan. 26, 2001,
killing.
San
Francisco Superior Court Judge James Warren, who moved the trial
to Los Angeles to ensure an impartial jury, said he received calls
about an interview in which attorney Nedra Ruiz accused Sharon Smith
of lying on the stand.
Ruiz
represents Marjorie Knoller, who was present during the fatal attack
and is accused of second-degree murder, involuntary manslaughter
and having a mischievous dog that killed a person. Knoller’s
husband, Robert Noel, faces the latter two charges.
Israel
continues strikes against Palestine
JERUSALEM
(AP) — Israel pressed its campaign of intense strikes throughout
the West Bank and Gaza Strip on Thursday, conducting sweeps in refugee
camps and killing 12 Palestinians. A Palestinian suicide bomber
attacked a West Bank settlement, while two other bombing attempts
were foiled.
In
Washington, The Associated Press learned President Bush dispatched
Middle East envoy Anthony Zinni to the troubled region Thursday
in hopes of halting widening violence. A senior administration official,
speaking on condition of anonymity, said Bush was prompted by positive
but unspecified developments in the region.
Israeli
troops stormed through two West Bank refugee camps before dawn and
rocketed a police station after nightfall in one of Gaza’s
most crowded camps, sending Palestinian civilians running for cover.
In the biblical West Bank town of Bethlehem, Israeli airstrikes
on Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s local headquarters hit
so hard they blew open bolted doors in nearby homes.
Israeli
leaders said the campaign was aimed at forcing the Palestinians
to stop terror attacks, but there was no sign of that on Thursday.
Mandela,
Carter and Gates form alliance against AIDS
JOHANNESBURG,
South Africa (AP) — Former South African President Nelson Mandela
joined former President Carter and Bill Gates Sr., the father of
Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates, Thursday in the battle against
Africa’s AIDS epidemic.
At
a function staged at the Zola clinic in Soweto, a vast sprawling
township on Johannesburg’s outskirts, the three men cradled
tiny HIV positive babies, and called for treatment to be made available
to AIDS sufferers and for an end to the stigmatization of those
suffering from the disease.
Mandela,
still widely revered three years after stepping down as president,
has become an increasingly outspoken critic of the South African
government’s refusal to make AIDS drugs widely available to
HIV positive mothers to lessen the chances of them passing the virus
on to their children.
“It
is necessary here to be broad-minded, not to feel that your ego
has been touched, if you listen to what the public is saying,”
he said Thursday.
Mandela’s
comments were directed at Mbhazima Shilowa, the governor of the
Gauteng province, which includes Johannesburg and Pretoria. Mandela
praised Shilowa for widening access to treatment at public hospitals.
Anna
Nicole Smith awarded $88 million in damages
SANTA
ANA, Calif. (AP) — A federal judge awarded former Playboy Playmate
Anna Nicole Smith more than $88 million in damages Thursday in the
latest ruling in a bitter legal fight over the estate of her late
husband, Texas oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall II.
U.S.
District Court Judge David O. Carter ruled Thursday that Marshall’s
son, E. Pierce Marshall, had interfered with Smith’s attempt
to get part of her late husband’s oil fortune, estimated at
hundreds of million of dollars.
“The
evidence of willfulness, maliciousness and fraud is overwhelming,”
Carter wrote.
He
found that E. Pierce Marshall and others spied on the couple and
controlled Smith’s access to her husband in the days before
he died.
E.
Pierce Marshall released a statement saying he would appeal and
that his father “would be appalled that the district court
continued to ignore his clearly stated wishes.”
Thursday’s
ruling came after E. Pierce Marshall challenged a previous federal
bankruptcy court
decision that awarded Smith $475 million of his father’s money.
Smith,
33, has fought lengthy court battles in California and Texas over
the fortune of her late husband, who died at age 90 in August 1995,
14 months after they wed.
Risk
of being killed greater when in first year of life
ATLANTA
(AP) — The risk of getting killed by someone is greater during
the first year of life than at any other time before age 17, the
government reported Thursday.
Infant
homicide victims were most likely to be killed during their first
week, with 82 percent of those slayings committed on the day of
birth, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
The
sixth through the eighth week — when babies cry more persistently
— was the second peak period for infant homicides, the CDC
said.
The
agency studied more than 3,300 death certificates from 1989 to 1998.
Homicide is the 15th-leading cause of infant deaths in the United
States.
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