QUOTE OF THE DAY “I must be out of my mind to be following Bob Mueller.” James Comey, who has been nominated to replace Mueller as FBI director Article, this pageEx-Enron exec’s sentence cut 10 years
The prison sentence of Jeffrey Skilling, the former chief executive of Enron who spearheaded the pervasive fraud that destroyed the energy company, was reduced by 10 years Friday after a federal judge approved a deal between his lawyers and prosecutors.
Judge Sim Lake of U.S. District Court in Houston, who oversaw Skilling’s trial in 2006, signed off on an agreement that will decrease the former executive’s 24-year sentence to 14 years.
The reduction was driven in part by a 2009 appeals court ruling that ordered a recalculation of Skilling’s sentence because of a mistake made by the judge in interpreting the federal sentencing guidelines.
Skilling, 59, will now exit prison as early as 2017. Although there is no parole in the federal criminal-justice system, Skilling will likely receive the standard 15 percent sentence reduction for good behavior and a one-year reduction for completing a substance-abuse treatment program.
In exchange for his reduced sentence, Skilling gave up about $42 million, all of which will be distributed to victims of Enron’s fraud.
Deen dropped amid race-remark criticism
Paula Deen, the self-proclaimed queen of Southern cooking and a mainstay of the Food Network, was dropped by the channel Friday.
The channel said it would not renew Deen’s contract when it expires at the end of this month. The announcement came hours after Deen failed to show up for an interview on the Today show and then in two online videos begged her family and audience for forgiveness for using racial slurs in the past.
Deen, 66, has faced criticism this week over her remarks in a deposition for a discrimination lawsuit by a former employee. In the document, she admitted she had used racial slurs, tolerated offensive jokes and condoned pornography in the workplace.
The Food Network statement did not elaborate on its reasons for dropping Deen.
In her first video Friday, posted on YouTube and later removed, Deen, near tears, said, “I want to apologize to everybody for the wrong that I’ve done. I want to learn and grow from this. Inappropriate and hurtful language is totally, totally unacceptable.”
In the second video, Deen said, “Your color of your skin, your religion, your sexual preference does not matter.”Texas abortion legislation moves forward
AUSTIN, Texas - Texas took a step toward enacting new abortion restrictions Friday after a lawmaker cut short an 11-hour attempt to stage a “citizen’s filibuster.”
Hundreds of people were waiting to speak - the majority of them women opposed to the legislation - when House Affairs Chairman Byron Cook, R-Corsicana, said the witnesses had become repetitive and that he would allow only two more hours of testimony. Normally each witness may testify for three minutes on a bill.
At stake was a collection of measures to restrict when, where and how a woman may get an abortion in Texas.
Cook’s committee approved all of the measures on a party-line vote without comment Friday afternoon.
The Republican-backed measures would ban abortions after 20 weeks; the current limit is 24 weeks. They would also require doctors who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles and would only allow abortions in surgical facilities. Many private hospitals will not grant privileges to a doctor who performs abortions, and most abortion clinics do not qualify as ambulatory surgical centers, a standard usually reserved for procedures that involve extensive surgery or general anesthesia.
Storms sweep states, kill S.D. woman
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. - A fast-moving line of storms barreled across the northern Plains and upper Midwest on Friday evening, killing a 63-year-old woman in her trailer on a South Dakota lake and leaving thousands of people without power.
Hamlin County Sheriff Chad Schlotterbeck said the county of about 6,000 residents was without power Friday evening, and the Fire Department was going door to door to assess the extent of damage.
“We’ve got homes destroyed,” he said.
A man in his 60s was injured in the storms, and another man was hospitalized from an electrical shock, Schlotterbeck said.
The National Weather Service said tornadoes touched down in Clark, Hamlin, Spink and Kingsbury counties and brought damaging winds and golf-ball-size hail.
In Minnesota, the storms blew through the Twin Cities area less than 24 hours after damaging winds and heavy rain uprooted trees and knocked out power to more than 157,000 customers.
Front Section, Pages 4 on 06/22/2013