Nevada: Gold mine milestone hit

A gold-rich swath of northeastern Nevada has produced more riches in the past four decades than all but two other mining regions in the world.

Within the past week, one of the mines on the 40-mile-long Carlin Trend geological formation yielded the 50 millionth troy ounce mined there since 1962 Â enough gold to fill a couple of average-sized living rooms.

At Friday’s gold price of about $300 an ounce, that would amount to $15 billion.

Only South Africa’s Witwaterstrand and Uzbekistan’s Muruntau have equaled Nevada in reaching the 50 million-ounce plateau.

Mining is Nevada’s No. 2 industry, behind tourism.

Illinois: Study recommends keeping death penalty

Two years after Illinois Gov. George Ryan halted executions, saying he couldn’t trust the state’s criminal justice system, a panel he named to examine the process is ready to recommend changes aimed at keeping innocent people off death row.

Abolishing capital punishment isn’t among the proposals to be announced today in Springfield, but the commission’s report will include about 70 other recommendations for judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys and police, co-chairman Frank McGarr said.

Ryan imposed the moratorium on capital punishment in January 2000 after several cases in which men were freed from death row because new evidence exonerated them or there were flaws in the way they were convicted. Since the 1977 reinstatement of the death penalty in Illinois, 13 men have been freed while 12 have been executed.

Kentucky: Suspect charged in sheriff’s slaying

A sniper accused of killing a sheriff then fleeing on a motorcycle belonging to one of the victim’s election opponents was charged in the slaying Sunday. Authorities said they were investigating whether he knew the owner of the vehicle, although they said the latter was not a suspect.

Sheriff Sam Catron was killed by a single rifle bullet Saturday evening as he was leaving a rally at Shopville. State Police Capt. Paul Hays said the shot came from “a considerable distance.” Police said a rifle was found but would not give details about the weapon.

Hays would not comment on a possible motive.

Police said a sheriff’s deputy and firefighter caught Danny S. Shelley, 30, of Eubank, about five miles from the rally when he wrecked the motorcycle that belonged to Jeff Morris, one of four people challenging Catron, 48, in the May 28 Republican primary.

Hays said Morris, who had been at the rally, hadn’t reported the motorcycle stolen. Asked if Morris and Shelley knew each other, Hays said, “that’s part of the investigation that we’re following up on.”

Detroit: Border tunnel closed for disaster exercise

Emergency workers closed the Detroit-Windsor tunnel for two hours Sunday to simulate a disaster in which a car and a Canadian passenger bus collide inside the mile-long tunnel.

Authorities on both sides of the border decided to conduct the drill after Sept. 11 to test their ability to handle emergencies, said Neal Belitsky, a spokesman for the Detroit and Canada Tunnel Corp.

Kwaku Atara, spokesman for the Detroit Fire Department, said “a lot of the things we thought could go wrong did go wrong.”

The biggest problem was the different agencies using their own frequencies to communicate. There is only one frequency in the tunnel, so firefighters could talk to each other but other emergency workers could not hear them, Atara said.

Authorities are now considering adding a second frequency.