QUOTE OF THE DAY
“We’ve done it all before, and so there was no question. Everybody jumped right in.”
Nicola Sapp, the budget officer in El Paso County, Colo., who said lessons learned fighting a destructive wildfire last year helped officials respond to the blaze this week near Colorado Springs Article, this page
New chemical-plant blast kills 1, hurts 5
DONALDSONVILLE, La. - One person was killed and several others were injured Friday in an explosion at a south Louisiana chemical plant, only miles from where another blast the previous day led to the deaths of two plant workers, authorities said.
Louisiana State Police Trooper Jared Sandifer said five people were injured, three of them critically, and were taken to area hospitals after Friday evening’s explosion at a CF Industries facility in Donaldsonville. The identity of the person killed in the blast wasn’t immediately released.
Sandifer said the explosion didn’t pose a threat to the area surrounding the plant.
On Thursday, an explosion at a chemical plant in Geismar owned by Williams Cos. Inc. led to two deaths and injured dozens of others. Donaldsonville and Geismar are both located in Ascension Parish and straddle the Mississippi River, between New Orleans and Baton Rouge.
A spokesman for Deerfield, Ill.-based CF Industries didn’t immediately respond to an e-mail and a phone call seeking comment.
This isn’t the first deadly blast at the company’s Donaldsonville plant. Three workers were killed and nine others were injured by an explosion and fire at the facility in May 2000.
Fort Hood suspect’s defense plan barred
FORT HOOD, Texas - An Army psychiatrist will not be allowed to tell jurors that he gunned down Fort Hood soldiers to protect the lives of Taliban leaders in Afghanistan, a military judge ruled Friday.
Maj. Nidal Hasan’s “defense of others” strategy fails as a matter of law, Col. Tara Osborn said during a 45-minute hearing. That defense strategy means that a killing was necessary to prevent the immediate harm or death of others.
Osborn said no soldiers at the Texas Army post on Nov.
5, 2009, posed an immediate threat to anyone in Afghanistan.
She said the legitimacy of the Afghanistan war is not an issue at Hasan’s trial, which has not started. She also ordered Hasan not to present evidence about his claims that deploying U.S. troops posed an immediate threat to Taliban fighters.
Hasan, an American-born Muslim, faces the death penalty or life without parole if convicted in the rampage that left 13 dead and nearly three dozen wounded.
Ohio crime lab looks for more victims
CLEVELAND - A state crime laboratory is checking new evidence to determine whether there were additional victims of a man charged with kidnapping three women and raping them in his home over a decade, the Ohio attorney general said Friday.
“We’ve received some additional evidence, but that would be normal,” Attorney General Mike DeWine said in a phone interview. He declined to specify the nature or source of the new evidence.
Ariel Castro, 52, has pleaded innocent to 329 counts in an indictment that covers August 2002, when the first victim disappeared, to February 2007. More charges could be filed in the case cracked May 6 when one woman escaped Castro’s house, leading to the rescue of the other two.
DeWine said results of the evidence review would be turned over to Cleveland police.
The indictment alleges Castro held the women captive, sometimes chaining them to a pole in a basement. It says one of the women tried to escape, and he assaulted her with a vacuum cord around her neck.
GOP abortion bill to add exceptions
WASHINGTON - House Republican leaders are preparing to add rape and incest exceptions to legislation that would ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy as they deal with the political fallout of a lawmaker’s comments about sexual-assault victims.
The exception for pregnancies caused by rape or incest will be incorporated into the legislation, H.R. 1797, by the House Rules Committee, so it won’t require a separate vote.
The new text, which the committee is scheduled to approve Monday, was posted on the panel’s website. Republican leaders plan to bring the bill up for a full House vote later in the week.
The addition of the rape and incest exceptions came after the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Trent Franks, said during a House Judiciary Committee meeting that “the incidence of rape resulting in pregnancy is very low.”
Franks, an Arizona Republican, later sought to clarify his remarks, saying that he meant to state that pregnancies caused by rape are only rarely carried for as long as six months before the women seek an abortion.
Front Section, Pages 4 on 06/15/2013