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BELFAST, Northern Ireland The Police Service of Northern Ireland says one of its officers has been shot to death in an ambush in Craigavon, a town southwest of Belfast.

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Monday’s attack in Craigavon’s Lismore Road area, a predominantly Irish Catholic circle, came two days after Real IRA dissidents discharge and killed two British soldiers at an army base in the town of Antrim. Two other soldiers and two pizza delivery men were wounded in that attack.

No form into groups is claiming trust for the latest shooting.

Dissidents hostile to Northern Ireland’s reconciliation process and the Catholic-Protestant government it forged be the subject of been increasing their attacks against British security forces in recent months.

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CHICAGO A federal judge has turned downward a beg for from impeached former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich to have Chicago’s top founded on prosecutor and his support thrown facing the corruption case against him.

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Chief Judge James F. Holderman of U.S. District Court said in an order issued Friday that “no legal precedent supports the granting of the relief sought by the defendant Blagojevich in this prompting.”

Blagojevich had argued that removing U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald from the case was necessary because the prosecutor made inflammatory remarks about him at a news discourse after the then-governor was arrested Dec. 9.

He said Robert Grant, special agent in charge of the Chicago FBI work, had made similar remarks. He also said Fitzgerald crossed the line through making public transcripts of wiretaps of Blagojevich conversations that should hold been sealed.

Among other things, Fitzgerald said Blagojevich had been on “a white-collar crime spree” that would make Abraham Lincoln “roll over in his grave.”

A speaker for the U.S. attorney’s office, Randall Samborn, said he had none comment steady Holderman’s order.

The judge didn’t get into the specifics of the remarks Fitzgerald and Grant made at the news conference where the charges in contact with Blagojevich and his chief of staff, John Harris, were unveiled.

Nor did he close the door on Blagojevich make the same argument again.

“If an indictment is returned charging defendant Blagojevich with federal, criminal offenses, the district judge to whom the question will be assigned pursuant to the clerk’s office random fixing system, behest exist the appropriate judicial officer to address the quantity if raised at that allotted period by the defendant,” Holderman wrote.

Blagojevich and Harris are charged in a criminal disease with plot to commit fraud and solicitation of bribery. Holderman has go down an April 7 deadline for the government to acquire an indictment from a grand jury.

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MONTPELIER, Vt. A Vermont man’s exemption from restraint. from jail could be transitory in relation to the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday that a state ordinarily is not responsible for a public defender’s delays in bringing a criminal case to trial.

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The courtyard by a 7-2 vote reversed a state Supreme Court decision in favor of Michael Brillon, whose conviction for assaulting his girlfriend was overturned. The state court said Brillon’s Sixth Amendment equitable to a speedy trial was violated behind he was jailed for three years and went through six defense attorneys previous to his trial.

Hours after Monday’s decision, Bennington County State’s Attorney Erica Marthage filed the paperwork with the Vermont District Court to have Brillon re-arrested. He was released in April after his 12- to 20-year sentence was cut short by the represent fully court’s decision.

“It creates a idea that someone gaming the system, like he was, isn’t going to be able to get away with it,” Marthage said Monday of the Supreme Court ruling. “It puts some reliance back into the system.”

Marthage said she didn’privately be assured of how the state court that will consider her proposition would rule because the case was so unusual.

The Supreme Court decision, written by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, said taxpayers may foot-soldiers the bill for a public defender, on the other hand the lawyer represents his client. It sent the case back to the Vermont Supreme Court for reconsideration.

“Most of the delay that the Vermont Supreme Court attributed to the state mould therefore be delivered of existence attributed to Brillon during the time that delays caused by his counsel,” Ginsburg said.

Justices Stephen Breyer and John Paul Stevens dissented, saying they would wish left the state inclosed area ruling solitary.

“We’re disappointed in the result,” before-mentioned Brillon’s attorney, William Nelson of Middlebury, who argued the case before the U.S. Supreme Court. “We contemplate that the Vermont Supreme Court had it right in terms of law and justice.”

Nelson said he was in touch with Brillon and had just received Marthage’s motion to have Brillon re-arrested. Nelson wouldn’privately affirmation in what place Brillon is now.

Steven Shapiro, the general legalized director of the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed court papers supporting Brillon’s argument, said the Supreme Court’s governing was closely tied to the facts of the circumstance.

The ruling left sincere the possibility similar future cases could be argued on the grounds of a “systemic breakdown” of the public defender system.

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SALT LAKE CITY Getting into a bar in Utah is about to become a lot easier.

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Gov. Jon Huntsman and dignity House and Senate leaders agreed Monday to eliminate the state’sitting much-criticized private club system, which requires someone to pall out an application and pay a fee for the right to enter a hinder supposing that not he or she is the visitor of a member.

Utah, with a government historically dominated by Mormon ecclesiastical authority members, is the only state in the country with such a law.

Huntsman has been pushing to eliminate the 40-year-old system in an effort to boost the represent fully’session $6 billion-a-year tourism activity and make Utah seem a little not so much droll to outsiders. The Utah Travel Industry Coalition expressed relief at the deal.

“I think it’s great that it essentially says to tourists, to travelers, that you are welcome in the present state and that we’re excited to host you and Utah’s a normal settle,” aforesaid Danny Richardson, the coalition’s executive director.

Typically, a visitor to a bar currently be able to direct the eye forward to to pay at least $4 in spite of a membership lasting three weeks or at least $12 for an annual being a member. A separate association is required for each bar and patrons can fill out an application at the door.

In exchange, the state’s DUI laws will become more strict and people who appear younger than 35 will possess their driver’s licenses scanned before entering a bar to construct sure they’re 21 or older and their ID is actual.

“How much easier at the door? Whew. Phenomenal. Now they be possible to concentrate without ceasing underage drinking and are you athwart 21,” said Mark Livingston, who owns a bar in Clearfield and belongs to a group that represents the state’s bar industry. “You’re not solitary filling out paperwork, you’re having to explain (the laws) to a lot of people, especially in the haunt areas. These people look at you like you’re from a different planet, so that really distracts you from which you should be doing in the first place.”

Lawmakers must appreciate the adjust by Thursday, when the legislative sitting ends. Bars could open their doors to the public on July 1. They could choose to remain private clubs, but scarcely any are expected to translate so.

“We’re moving toward much greater normalization today of our alcohol policy,” Huntsman said.

Utah’s Mothers Against Drunk Driving chapter is pleased with the stiffer DUI penalties but would like the state to keep track of everyone who drinks, not just those who look younger than 35, said Art Brown, the chapter’s president.

“We’d like to see it fair further because it’s pretty momentous business to overserve somebody having pair, three general condition of affairs the legal limit and then confide automobile homicide. There needs to be an audit trail for public safety,” Brown said.

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KNOXVILLE, Tenn. A University of Tennessee student charged with hacking into the personal e-mail account of Sarah Palin, the Alaska governor and former Republican vice presidential nominee, pleaded not guilty Monday to three more charges in the case.

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A magistrate agreed to push back the effort of David Kernell, the son of a Democratic Tennessee lawmaker, from May to October.

Kernell allegedly gained access to Palin’s reckoning in September by dint of. correctly answering a series of material security questions.

The added counts are fraud, unlawful electronic transmission of material utmost Tennessee and attempts to conceal records to impede an FBI investigation.

“The facts of the case have not changed, without more the theories of law the government is pursuing have changed,” defense attorney Wade Davies said. He plans to seek dismissal of the new charges.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Greg Weddle did not immediately return a call for comment on the new charges.

The at the head charge of intentionally accessing Palin’s account lacking authorization, unsealed in October, carried a fine of up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Davies contended it should regard been a misdemeanor.

Following the source impeachment, Kernell pleaded not guilty and was released on several conditions, including staying not present from his computer leave out for school work.

The superseding indictment, filed Feb. 3, included the original charge and the three additional ones.

Both the cause and the superseding indictments declared Kernell broached into the Alaska governor’s widely publicized Yahoo! e-mail account, reset the password and was able to read the contents, make screenshots and post his exploits on the Web using the nickname “rubico.” The accusation said at least one other person followed a similar path into Palin’s account.

Kernell is the son of longtime state Rep. Mike Kernell of Memphis.

In court filings, Davies has questioned whether a search support by authority for Kernell’s apartment authorized investigators to confiscate his laptop and military its contents. Prosecutors responded that “the griping of the defendant’s computer had many justifications.”

Original text: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2008831640_appalinhacked.html?syndication=rss

MUNICH A man dubbed “the Swiss gigolo” by the German media was sentenced to six years in prison Monday notwithstanding defrauding Germany’sitting richest woman of euro7 million ($9 million) and attempting to blackmail her for tens of millions more.

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Helg Sgarbi (S’Gar-bee) admitted to the Munich court that he threatened to release privately recorded videotapes of trysts with BMW heiress Susanne Klatten, 46, except the married woman gave him millions of euros (dollars) to keep quiet.

The 44-year-old also admitted convincing Klatten to give him euro7 million ($9 million) by saw it was for the manipulation of a girl left paraplegic after he hit her with his car.

The Munich state court found Sgarbi actually offending of fraud and attempted blackmail of Klatten, who turned him in to police.

He was also found guilty of fraud and attempted blackmail in the same manner with being taking euro2.4 million ($3 million) from three other women - identified by the initials H., R., and S. - who were located by authorities in their investigation of the Klatten case.

Prosecutor Thomas Steinkraus-Koch praised Klatten for her bravery in stepping forward.

“The excepting that victim who came to us and gave a witness statement is Mrs. Klatten. We had to find the others, with prominent cavil,” Steinkraus-Koch said.

Prosecutors said the women were the victims in a series of scams by Sgarbi, who practised as a counsel, spoke six languages and worked for the reason that a banker at Credit Suisse until the mid-1990s. He also served as a reticence officer in the Swiss army, according to prosecutors.

According to Swiss seek documents, a countess 50 years older than Sgarbi accused him of imposture her in 2001 but then had charges dropped after he returned 20 million Swiss francs ($17 million) to her, Germany’s Stern magazine declared.

Steinkraus-Koch confirmed that one case had been dropped in Switzerland and Sgarbi had been sentenced to six months test on another case in the country.

“It was not the first time he was involved in such things in this ceremonious behavior,” Steinkraus-Koch said.

Klatten did not attend the four-hour trial and her attorney made none statement to the court. Her spokesman was not immediately available for comment.

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NASHVILLE, Tenn. Country singer Hank Locklin, whose smooth tenor voice on hits likely “Send Me the Pillow You Dream On” and “Please Help Me I’m Falling” marked a career that spanned half a century, has died. He was 91.

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Locklin died Sunday at his home in Brewton, Ala., Opry publicist Jessie Schmidt said. She said the cause of death was not subsistence released.

Locklin helped usher in “the Nashville Sound” that gave country music a added lush consider the consciousness of being. He performed attached the Grand Ole Opry for 47 years.

“I’ve been sacred to have hit songs that are timeless and appeal to the generations,” he said in 2001.

He recently released his 65th album, “By the Grace of God.”

His “Send Me the Pillow You Dream On” was a hit in 1958 and “Please Help Me I’m Falling” in 1960.

“Send Me the Pillow You Dream On,” which Locklin wrote, also was recorded later by Johnny Tillotson and Dean Martin.

He joined the Grand Ole Opry cast in 1960 and the last time performed there on Sept. 8, 2007, Schmidt said

Locklin spent 19 years recording for RCA Records.

His other hits included “Let Me Be the One,” “Geisha Girl,” “Why, Baby, Why” and “It’s a Little More Like Heaven.”

In 2001, he released his in the beginning album in couple decades, “Generations in Song.” Vince Gill and Dolly Parton joined him on the LP.

Locklin, as much as a single one one else, popularized country music in Ireland where he repeatedly toured. In the mid-1960s he recorded the album “Irish Songs Country Style” because of his popularity in Ireland.

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WASHINGTON Sen. Joe Lieberman has changed his tune on Barack Obama. After campaigning across the country for Republican John McCain in 2008 and attacking Obama as naive, untested and unwilling to take on powerful special interests, Lieberman now showers approval onward the popular reinvigorated Democratic president.

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“He’sitting shown real leadership,” Lieberman told The Associated Press in an meeting. “Bottom line: I think Barack Obama, president of the United States, is off to a extremely good start.”

The Connecticut independent, who faces re-election in 2012 in a state in which place Obama is popular, is animated to patch up fences with Democrats still fuming over his critique of Obama during the general election campaign.

Lieberman has applauded Obama’s national security team. He gushed over Obama’s “inspirational and unifying” inaugural. Lieberman even played a key role helping Obama win Senate passage of the economic stimulus plan.

As if to underline the point, Lieberman has even clashed on the Senate floor with his pal McCain over the stimulus plan and a District of Columbia voting rights bill.

“I don’t reckon of Joe as the independent, I really think of Joe as a Democrat,” said Lieberman’s home state colleague, Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn.

It’s a striking turnaround from the days when Lieberman was a fixture at McCain’sitting side during campaign stops. McCain had even considered making Lieberman, who nearly won the vice presidency upon the Democratic ticket with Al Gore in 2000, his running mate.

“Do I think it is more principle or politics?” aforesaid Quinnipiac University Poll instructor Doug Schwartz of Lieberman’session moves. “It is a tough question.”

Lieberman’sitting campaigning because McCain grieve him with Connecticut voters, particularly Democrats, Schwartz said.

Connecticut’s Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, who is mentioned as a potential 2012 Senate Democratic candidate, would beat Lieberman by 28 points in a hypothetical matchup, a recent Quinnipiac poll showed.

Lieberman scoffed at any suggestion his take in of Obama is more about political expediency than principle.

“I haven’t changed … I’ve always had a voting register that is more through the Democrats than by the Republicans,” he said.

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WASHINGTON Embarking upon arguably his most complex political go to war let slip the dogs of war yet, President Barack Obama is using skills honed during his presidential campaign and lessons learned from past failures to try to overhaul the health care system.

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It’s a feat none before him has achieved. As such, it would pay memorial dividends for a popular new president looking for history-making accomplishments ahead of his likely 2012 re-election campaign.

“Nothing is harder in politics than doing a thing now that costs money in order to gain benefits 20 years from now,” Obama acknowledged last week.

That’session exactly what he’s trying as he seeks to ensure freedom from disease care for everyone in a country with the world’s costliest system and any estimated 48 million uninsured people.

In office since Jan. 20, Obama has laid down an ambitious marker of one year to fulfil what the last Democratic president spectacularly failed to do in two. Bill Clinton made a concatenation of tactical mistakes and was outmaneuvered by the opposition.

“We soon well-informed that not at all was off limits in this war and that the other side was far better armed by the tools of political battle: money, media and organization,” Hillary Rodham Clinton, who led the health care fight for her husband, said in her 2003 memoir.

Obama is determined not to let that happen anew.

He and his advisers, including manifold who served in Clinton’s White House, have studied what went wrong for the time of 1993-1994, and are mindful to avoid the same miscalculations and missteps.

In harmony through the White House, the Democratic National Committee and Obama’session campaign apparatus - Organizing for America, with its 13 million-strong e-mail list and 2 million “super volunteers” - will have being intimately involved in promoting the plan as well since pressuring opponents. A paid TV ad campaign is all but certain.

Other advocates of revamping hale condition care also have created a network of diverse coalitions. They are made up of strange bedfellows, such as toil unions and industry representatives, consumers and businesses. Others, like America’s Agenda: Health Care for All, are composed of insurers and drug makers, including more that fought Clinton’s plan. Those, too, now generally support an look into.

All are stockpiling cash and waiting to be careful by what means they volition need to use it. Budgets and strategies are being closely held.

Both Democrats and Republicans look forward to some expensive battle. They say it will dwarf the $30 million that the Health Insurance Association of America spent steady its TV commercials featuring Harry and Louise, a couple who talked fearfully in an opposite direction the Clinton plan as they paid bills at their kitchen stand.

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HONG KONG

Wei Hong, one of the eight vice governors of Sichuan province, also declined to release the number of schoolchildren who were killed, saying the exact tally still had not been calculated almost 10 months later, news agencies reported from Beijing. Wei spoke to reporters on the sidelines of the National People’s Congress there.

State news media have reported the quake left more than 80,000 dead and thousands more missing.

The most controversial aspect of the quake has been the damage to 14,000 classrooms, half of which collapsed entirely.

Heavy damage to schools, some of which crumbled in neighborhoods where other structures remained standing, has prompted accusations from local residents that the schools suffered from what many Chinese have termed “tofu” construction.

Local and provincial officials have responded angrily to criticisms of school-construction practices and particularly to suggestions from some parents that there might have been corruption involved in the construction process for schools.

The local authorities have silenced many parents who lost children in the earthquake, through a combination of compensation payments and intimidation.

A mother whose 11-year-old daughter died in the earthquake said by telephone Sunday that “of course it was tofu construction that led to the collapse of the school.”

The mother, who requested anonymity because of continued government efforts to discourage public discussion, said she believed the government must have a tally of schoolchildren who died in the earthquake, because communities in her area were well aware of death tolls at their local schools.

Wei was promoted to vice governor June 1, less than three weeks after the May 12 quake, part of a series of shifts in provincial leaders after the quake but may have been scheduled to some extent before the natural disaster.

The Beijing authorities sent their own committee of experts to Sichuan province after the earthquake to assess construction practices there.

The chairman of the committee, Ma Zongjin, said in September that because of a rush to build schools during China’s economic boom in recent years, more than 1,000 damaged schools had suffered from at least one of two shortcomings: They were built extremely close to the fault line and were destroyed with other structures near them, or they were poorly built.

But detailed results of that investigation have not been released.

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