WASHINGTON, D.C.
Treasury official investigated after new cash is missing
A high-ranking Treasury Department official is on administrative leave pending an investigation into the disappearance of newly printed cash, a department spokesman said Saturday. The money, reportedly about $30,000, was recovered.
The official involved is Thomas Janney, chief of the Office of Currency Production in the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, bureau spokesman Larry Felix said. Felix would not say what led the agency to place Janney on leave.
Officials were alerted to a cash discrepancy about five weeks ago, Felix said, and immediately began a search.
"We discovered the money within the halls of the bureau," Felix said.
California
Jury OKs death penalty for murder conviction
A jury recommended the death penalty for a man who was convicted of four murders and had demanded $20,000 to say where two of the victims' remains are stashed.
Wesley Shermantine Jr. sat motionless as the jury's decision was read Friday after more than three days of deliberations. Formal sentencing is set for April 23.
"I'd like to stick the juice into his veins myself," said John Vanderheiden, whose daughter Cyndi disappeared after leaving a bar with Shermantine in 1998. "His kind just doesn't deserve to breathe the air."
Shermantine, 35, a former construction worker from Stockton, has boasted of killing as many as 22 people.
Prosecutor Thomas Testa said Friday that Shermantine is being investigated in several disappearances from California and other Western states. He would not specify the number, but said it is far less than 22.
MIAMI
Cuban ordered to pay for sham marriage to spy
A woman who sued Cuba after she unwittingly married an alleged Cuban spy has been awarded $7.1 million in compensatory damages.
Ana Margarita Martinez said she married Juan Pablo Roque in 1995 without realizing the relationship was a cover for his work.
In 1992, Roque swam to the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay and requested political asylum, saying he was a disenchanted Cuban officer. He volunteered to work with Brothers to the Rescue, which patrols the waters off Cuba in search of people trying to flee the island.
Roque was indicted in absentia as part of an alleged 14-member Cuban spy ring.
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