American dream ends in 2 NJ workers' brutal deaths

MOUNT HOLLY, N.J. -- Alex Aguilar left his family and farm hand job in Honduras seven years ago to pursue a better life, eventually finding work cleaning stables and feeding thoroughbreds six days a week at a New Jersey horse farm. His mother worried for him.

"It was a tremendous sadness for us all, but it was especially hard for her to say goodbye," Alex's brother, Jose Aguilar, said in Spanish. "It's hard for any mother or brother to say goodbye, not knowing when, or if, you'll ever see someone again."

But no one imagined that fellow Honduran immigrant workers, also in the U.S. seeking a better life, might be his biggest threat.

Last month, Alex Aguilar, 29, and a co-worker, Marcial Morales-Maldonado, 48, were found hacked to death with a machete at the Sterling Chase Horse Farm in Springfield, a 118-acre thoroughbred horse breeding farm south of Trenton where they worked and lived.

New England pastor houses child killer

CHICHESTER, N.H. -- A pastor in this quiet, picturesque New England town thought he was doing the Christian thing when he took in a convicted child killer who had served his time but had nowhere to go.

But some neighbors of the Rev. David Pinckney vehemently disagree, one even threatening to burn his house down after officials could find no one else willing to take 60-year-old Raymond Guay.

"Politicians think they can dump their trash in our small town," said one neighbor, Jon Morales, whose girlfriend and two children live across an unpaved road from Pinckney's home.

Chichester, a town of about 2,200 residents in south-central New Hampshire, has been in an uproar since the weekend, when police announced that Guay would spend two months with Pinckney's family.

About 40 angry residents protested outside the home Saturday, Merrimack County Sheriff Scott Hilliard said. One protester blustered that he wanted to set it on fire, he said.

Town leaders were expected Tuesday night to ask state and federal officials to remove Guay from town.

Guay already had a criminal record when he was charged in 1973, at age 25, with abducting and murdering a 12-year-old boy in Nashua. Authorities said he planned to sexually assault the boy, whose body was clad only in socks and undershorts.

Jurors' online posts concern trial lawyers

PHILADELPHIA -- Eric Wuest's post late Friday to Facebook friends teased: "Stay tuned for a big announcement on Monday everyone!"

Wuest wasn't hinting at an engagement or new job. Instead, the law firm benefits coordinator was suggesting the verdict was near after five months as a juror in a high-profile criminal case.

On Monday, a nervous Wuest found himself in the judge's chambers, defending his veiled posts about the corruption trial of former state Sen. Vincent Fumo in Philadelphia. But he is not alone in posting his courtroom musings online, according to one lawyer who studies Twitter.

"Dozens of people a day are sending tweets or Facebook updates from courthouses all over America," said Anne W. Reed, a Milwaukee trial lawyer and jury consultant who writes a blog that follows juries and social networking sites.

While most posts are innocuous, Reed said, a few cases have raised eyebrows -- and questions about whether judges need to clarify jury instructions about online communications.

'Smart drug' Provigil may be habit-forming

CHICAGO -- A so-called "smart drug" popular with young people may carry more of an addiction risk than thought, a small government study suggests.

Scans of 10 healthy men showed that the prescription drug Provigil caused changes in the brain's pleasure center, very much like potentially habit-forming classic stimulants. Modafinil, the drug's generic name, is sometimes used as an illegal study aid by college students.

"It would be wonderful if one could take a drug and be smarter, faster or have more energy," said Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, who led the study with a Brookhaven National Laboratory scientist. "But that is like fairy tales. We currently have nothing that has those benefits without side effects."

The study, appearing in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association, may bust the myth that the drug is safe for healthy people, experts said.

Provigil is approved to treat excessive daytime sleepiness caused by narcolepsy. On the market since 1999, it's the flagship product of Cephalon Inc. of Frazer, Pa., and its sales approached $1 billion last year. The company is developing a spin-off called Nuvigil.