In the news

Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Gov. John Kasich, R-Ohio, commuted the sentence of death-row inmate Ronald Post to life in prison with no chance of parole on the grounds that he had poor legal representation, and his office said the governor never considered Post’s arguments in federal court that at 450 pounds he is too fat to be executed.

Martin Scorsese, the award-winning director behind such films as Goodfellas and The Departed, will produce and direct a documentary on former President Bill Clinton for HBO.

Karima el-Mahroug, better known as Ruby, the Moroccan woman at the center of Silvio Berlusconi’s sex-for-hire scandal in which the former Italian premier is accused of paying for sex with el-Mahroug when she was 17, has been fined $650 by a Milan court for twice failing to appear as a witness at the trial.

Christopher Chaney, 35, a Jacksonville, Fla., man who broke into the personal online accounts of Scarlett Johansson, Christina Aguilera and other women and posted revealing photos and other material on the Internet, has been sentenced by a federal judge in Los Angeles to 10 years in prison.

Annie Dookhan, 35, a Massachusetts chemist accused of deliberately faking test results on drug samples in criminal cases, has been indicted on 27 charges, including 17 counts of obstruction of justice, said state Attorney General Martha Coakley.

Cmdr. Howard Palmer, a Texas State Guard regiment commander, has been criticized by Guard officials over a scathing e-mail he sent to his subordinates after one of them posted a petition on the White House website asking that Texas be allowed to secede from the United States.

Ban Ki-moon, secretary general of the United Nations, has moved back into his newly renovated office after three years in temporary quarters and also was presented with a new armored car wrapped in a red ribbon with a big bow, which he said “looks like a very big holiday gift for me.”

Front Section, Pages 1 on 12/18/2012