US man gets 25 years in babysitter murder
NEW YORK. United States
A New Jersey man is headed to prison after a GPS system secretly installed by his suspicious wife helped convict him of intentionally running over a 12-year-old babysitter.
George Ford Jr, of Piscataway, has been sentenced to 25 years to life. He admitted during his sentencing that he killed 12-year-old Shyanne Somers in July 2007 but told a judge yesterday that it was an accident and not murder.
The judge found the 44-year-old Ford guilty of second-degree murder after a non-jury trial in February.
Prosecutors said Ford was high on cocaine when he hit Shyanne with his pickup truck to stop her from talking about what happened during the more than three hours he spent alone with the girl behind an abandoned farmhouse.
New sensors arrived days before crash
PARIS, France
Air France received replacement airspeed sensors for its Airbus 330s three days before the fatal crash of Flight 447, but the airline's chief executive said yesterday he was not convinced faulty monitors were the cause.
As storms bore down on the crash zone off Brazil, a French submarine searched the depths of the Atlantic Ocean for the black boxes that hold the best hope of finding out what happened to the plane when the Airbus A330-200 flew into heavy storms May 31 with 228 people aboard.
So far, investigators have focused on the possibility that external speed monitors, Pitot tubes, iced over and gave false readings to the plane's computers.
The plane's manufacturer, Airbus, encountered new problems yesterday when an Airbus 330-220 carrying 203 people made an emergency landing in Guam after an electrical problem sparked a small cockpit fire, Jetstar airline reported.
88-y-o gunman to be charged with murder
WASHINGTON (AP)
An 88-year-old white supremacist who opened fire in the United States Holocaust Memorial and Museum, killing a guard, will be charged with murder, officials said yesterday.
Security Guard Stephen T. Johns was shot to death by Holocaust denier James von Brunn after opening the door to let him into the museum, Police Chief Cathy Lanier said at a news conference.
Von Brunn, who once tried to kidnap members of the Federal Reserve, then exchanged fire with guards who shot and critically injured him, stopping him from entering the museum and hurting anyone else, Lanier said.
The museum was closed and flags flew at half-staff yesterday in honour of Johns, 39. Washington Mayor Adrian Fenty said quick work by law enforcement "literally saved the lives of countless people".
Chinese Muslims freed from Gitmo
WASHINGTON, United States
Four of the Chinese Muslims who have been detained at Guantanamo Bay for years while courts and nations debated their fate were freed yesterday and resettled in Bermuda.
They were among 17 Chinese Muslims, or Uighurs, picked up in Afghanistan and Pakistan in 2001 who remained at the military detention centre in Cuba even after the United States government had determined they were not enemy combatants and should be released.
Bermuda Premier Ewart Brown told a news conference that the men would be allowed to live in Bermuda, a self-governing British territory, initially as refugees, but they would be permitted to pursue citizenship and would have the right to work, travel and "potentially settle elsewhere".