In the News

Saddam appears in court for questioning

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Saddam Hussein was cross-examined for the first time in his six-month-old trial on Wednesday, saying he approved death sentences against Shiites in the 1980s because he believed evidence had proven they were involved in an assassination attempt against him.

Saddam, standing alone as the sole defendant in the courtroom, dodged some questions from prosecutors over his role in a crackdown against the Shiites, giving long speeches calling the court “illegitimate.” He accused the current Shiite-led Interior Ministry of killing and torturing thousands of Iraqis and bickered with chief judge Raouf Abdel-Rahman.

In the current trial, Saddam and seven former members of his regime are charged in a crackdown against Shiites launched after a 1982 assassination attempt against Saddam in the town of Dujail. In the sweep that followed, 148 Shiites were killed and hundreds were imprisoned, some of them having undergone torture.

Homeland deputy arrested in seduction case

MIAMI – The deputy press secretary for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security was charged with using a computer to seduce a child after authorities said he struck up sexual conversations with an undercover detective posing as a 14-year-old girl.

Brian J. Doyle, 55, who is the fourth-ranking official in the department’s public affairs office, was expected to be placed on administrative leave Wednesday.

The undercover detective had called Doyle at work and said she got a Web camera, as he had asked her to do, and wanted to test it out, said Carrie Rodgers, Polk County Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman.

“He said he would get on the computer when he got home from work so we knew he would be on,” Rodgers said. “When (police) went to his door, he was on the computer in the middle of a conversation with the girl.”

Doyle found the teenager’s profile online and began having sexually explicit conversations with her on the Internet on March 14, the sheriff’s office said in a statement.

Mass. lawmakers OK mandatory health care bill

BOSTON – Lawmakers overwhelmingly approved a bill that would make Massachusetts the first state to require that all its citizens have some form of health insurance.

The plan-approved Tuesday just 24 hours after the final details were released-would use a combination of financial incentives and penalties to dramatically expand access to health care over the next three years and extend coverage to the state’s estimated 500,000 uninsured.

If all goes as planned, poor people will be offered free or heavily subsidized coverage; those who can afford insurance but refuse to get it will face increasing tax penalties until they obtain coverage; and those already insured will see a modest drop in their premiums.

The measure does not call for new taxes but would require businesses that do not offer insurance to pay a $295 annual fee per employee.

New dinosaur resembles large turkey

SALT LAKE CITY – Fossils discovered in Southern Utah are from a new species of bird-like dinosaur that resembled a 7-foot-tall brightly colored turkey and could run up to 25 mph, scientists said.

Fossils of the meat-eater’s hand-like claw and foot were found in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument near the Arizona border, giving paleontologists reason to believe some dinosaurs known as raptors roamed from Canada to Northern New Mexico about 75 million years ago.

Much smaller variations of the dinosaur had been found previously in Montana, South Dakota and the Canadian province of Alberta.

“This is the southernmost occurrence of this group, and it’s about two times the size of the ones up north,” said Lindsay Zanno, a doctoral student at the University of Utah who named the dinosaur Hagryphus giganteus, or giant four-footed, birdlike god of the Western desert.