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Utah man pleads not guilty in ricin case SALT LAKE CITY -- A man accused of failing to report that his cousin was making the deadly toxin ricin pleaded not guilty to a federal charge Tuesday.
Thomas Tholen told investigators he knew ricin was being produced in his suburban Salt Lake City basement but didn't call authorities because he didn't want anyone to find the weapons and explosive devices stored down there, according to court documents. "It's a crime to know about it, do nothing about it and conceal it," prosecutor John Huber said outside court. "There was a several-day period when lawmen were put off the trail." Tholen, 54, of Riverton, pleaded not guilty to a felony count of knowing about a crime but failing to report it. If convicted he could get up to 3 years in prison and a $250,000 fine, Huber said.
Dallas man freed after 27 years by DNA testing DALLAS -- A Dallas man who spent more than 27 years in prison for a murder he didn't commit was freed Tuesday, after being incarcerated longer than any other wrongfully convicted U.S. inmate cleared by DNA testing James Lee Woodard stepped out of the courtroom and raised his arms to a throng of photographers. Supporters and other people gathered outside the court erupted in applause. "No words can express what a tragic story yours is," state District Judge Mark Stoltz told Woodard at a brief hearing before his release. Woodard, cleared of the 1980 murder of his girlfriend, became the 18th person in Dallas County to have his conviction cast aside. That's a figure unmatched by any county nationally, according to the Innocence Project, a New York-based legal center that specializes in overturning wrongful convictions. "I thank God for the existence of the Innocence project," Woodard, 55, told the court. "Without that, I wouldn't be here today. I would be wasting away in prison."
Obama outraged by pastor's comments WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. -- Barack Obama angrily denounced his former pastor for "divisive and destructive" remarks on race, seeking to divorce himself from the incendiary speaker and a fury that threatens to engulf his front-running Democratic presidential campaign. Obama is trying to tamp down the uproar over the Rev. Jeremiah Wright at a tough time in his campaign. The Illinois senator is coming off a loss in Pennsylvania to rival Hillary Rodham Clinton and trying to win over white working-class voters in Indiana and North Carolina in next Tuesday's primaries. "I am outraged by the comments that were made and saddened over the spectacle that we saw yesterday," Obama told reporters at a news conference Tuesday. His strong words come just six weeks after Obama delivered a sweeping speech on race in which he sharply condemned Wright's remarks but did not leave the church or repudiate the minister himself, who he said was like a family member. After weeks of staying out of the public eye while critics lambasted his sermons, the former pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago made three public appearances in four days to defend himself. On Monday, Wright criticized the U.S. government as imperialist and stood by his suggestion that the United States invented the HIV virus as a means of genocide against minorities. "Based on this Tuskegee experiment and based on what has happened to Africans in this country, I believe our government is capable of doing anything," he said.
Family terrorized by incest is reunited AMSTETTEN, Austria -- In an "astonishing" scene, members of an Austrian family terrorized by decades of incest and imprisonment met for the first time at a clinic where psychiatrists are helping them recover, authorities said Tuesday. Details of the emotional gathering emerged as police said DNA tests confirmed Josef Fritzl is the biological father of his daughter's six children. The retired electrician confessed Monday to imprisoning his daughter Elisabeth for 24 years in a warren of soundproofed cellar rooms, sexually abusing her, fathering seven children with her and discarding the body of one, who died in infancy, in a furnace. Three of the children were locked in the underground labyrinth with their mother for years and had never met their other siblings or grandmother, who lived upstairs. Hospital officials said Elisabeth, five of the children and Fritzl's wife Rosemarie spent their first moments together Sunday.
Afghan security chiefs knew of plot KABUL, Afghanistan -- Afghanistan's three top security chiefs managed to hold onto their jobs Tuesday despite admitting before parliament that they failed to prevent an attack on President Hamid Karzai even though they knew about the plot. At least one policeman was arrested in the assassination attempt, deepening concerns the Taliban have infiltrated the country's poorly paid security forces. The attack also exposed the vulnerability of the capital to militants, who are strongest in the volatile south and east. A suicide attack Tuesday on counter-narcotics police in the east killed 18 people, including 11 police officers. Thirty-six people, including two Australian journalists, were wounded. The Taliban claimed responsibility. Afghan intelligence chief Amrullah Saleh gave an in-depth explanation to lawmakers of the assault Sunday on a ceremony in Kabul marking Afghanistan's victory over the Soviet occupation of the country in the 1980s. Karzai and other dignitaries escaped unharmed but three others, including a lawmaker, died. Saleh said Karzai had been warned of the threat. |
