Subscribe
Jobs
Cars
Real Estate
Apts
Classifieds
Shop
WASHINGTON – A retired State Department worker and his wife accused of a decades-long plot to spy for Cuba pleaded guilty Friday in a deal that will leave him behind bars for the rest of his life but gives her a chance at freedom in six years.
Walter Kendall Myers, 72, and his wife, Gwendolyn, 71, were caught in an undercover FBI sting operation, arrested in June and held without bail.
Two people familiar with the plea deal, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the negotiations, said Walter Kendall Myers agreed to a life sentence partly to help his wife get less prison time in the hopes she would not die behind bars.
Walter Kendall Myers pleaded guilty to plotting to commit espionage and to wire fraud. His wife pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of plotting to gather and transmit national defense.
The Senate ethics committee on Friday admonished Democratic Sen. Roland Burris for misleading investigators about his maneuvering to get Barack Obama’s old Senate seat from the governor who was ousted for trying to sell it.
Burris was appointed by disgraced former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who was impeached and driven from office after he was accused of trying to sell the seat.
The committee placed special emphasis on a phone conversation between Burris and the governor’s brother, where Burris linked his willingness to raise money for the governor with his desire for appointment to the Senate.
While finding no violation of law, the committee’s “Public Letter of Qualified Admonition” told Burris that “senators must meet a much higher standard of conduct” than he exhibited with his constantly changing statements.
Raging floods engulfed northern England’s picturesque Lake District on Friday after the heaviest rainfall ever recorded in Britain, killing a police officer and trapping dozens in their swamped homes.
Military helicopters winched dozens of people to safety, and emergency workers in bright orange inflatable boats rescued scores more after an unprecedented deluge.
British soldiers conducted house-to-house searches for those trapped by floods as deep as 8 feet.
Troops also dropped down on lines from Royal Air Force helicopters, breaking through rooftops to pluck people to safety.
Heavy rain and gales also brought widespread flooding to Ireland, as more than 3 feet of water shut down the center of the country’s second-largest city, Cork, and more than a dozen towns and villages.
A British man who said he strangled his wife of 40 years during a nightmare about fighting off an intruder has been found not guilty in her death.
Prosecutors had originally asked a jury to find Brian Thomas not guilty by reason of insanity, which could see him sent to a psychiatric hospital. But they withdrew the case against him Friday and said expert opinion was that a rare sleep disorder was to blame.
The Pacific resort island of Saipan was reeling Saturday from one of the most violent attacks in its history, when a gunman killed five people, including two small children and himself, in a rampage that ended at a World War II historical site.
Police said the attack began Friday inside a shooting range in the community of Kannat Tabla.
Shortly after, the gunman began firing a rifle from a white van at a group of South Koreans visiting a World War II historic spot in nearby Marpi, wounding five. Police do not believe the shooter was targeting tourists.
The Pacific News Center identified the gunman as Lee Zhong Ren, an employee at the shooting range. The news station also reported that Lee left behind a suicide note that spoke of a business deal gone bad.
Scientists in Switzerland switched on the world’s largest atom smasher Friday night for the first time since the $10 billion machine suffered a spectacular failure more than a year ago.
It took a year of repairs before beams of protons circulated late Friday in the Large Hadron Collider for the first time since it was heavily damaged by a simple electrical fault.
Circulation of the beams was a significant leap forward.
The European Organization for Nuclear Research has taken the restart of the collider step by step to avoid further setbacks as it moves toward new scientific experiments – probably starting in January – regarding the makeup of matter and the universe.
