• The Wal-Mart driver whose tractor-trailer slammed into a van carrying comedian Tracy Morgan, critically injuring Morgan and killing another passenger, pleaded innocent Wednesday in a New Jersey courtroom. Prosecutors have charged Kevin Roper, 35, of Jonesboro, Ga., with one count of vehicular homicide and several counts of assault by auto in the collision Saturday on the northbound New Jersey Turnpike in Cranbury Township in Middlesex County. In charging documents filed this week, prosecutors said Roper had not slept in 24 hours before the pileup, which occurred about 45 miles south of New York City. James McNair, also a comedian, died in the crash. Wearing a white dress shirt, Roper sat silently through most of his brief appearance. His lawyer, David Glassman, read the plea of innocent into the record. When the judge, Bradley Ferencz, ordered Roper to return to court as directed, Roper replied, "Yes, sir." Ferencz said a review of Roper's driving record showed that he had no history of accidents. Roper was allowed to remain free on $50,000 bond.
• Likening hard-line Scottish separatists to some of her sinister fictional villains, author J.K. Rowling has donated the equivalent of $1.7 million to the campaign to keep Scotland in the United Kingdom. Scots are to vote in a referendum on independence in September, and the move by Rowling, who said in a blog post Wednesday that she was making a "substantial" contribution to the campaign, provided opponents of a breakaway with financial support and a welcome celebrity endorsement. The campaign for independence also has received support from high-profile figures, but nothing on such a scale from a celebrity. With the referendum in full swing, Rowling, the creator of the Harry Potter series, said the independence movement was the product of a "fringe of nationalists" who sought to demonize anyone who was not unquestionably in favor of their cause. Rowling, a resident of Edinburgh who said that she had lived in Scotland for 21 years, said such people might find her "insufficiently Scottish" to hold a view on the matter because she was born in the west of England and grew up in England, close to the border with Wales. "When people try to make this debate about the purity of your lineage, things start getting a little Death Eaterish for my taste," Rowling added in a post on her blog, referring to elite followers of the arch villain Lord Voldemort in the Harry Potter books.
A Section on 06/12/2014