Washington, D.C.

Energy firms overcharged Calif. $1.8 billion, judge says

Energy companies overcharged California by $1.8 billion during the state’s power crisis, a federal regulatory judge said Thursday. The amount is far short of what the state is seeking.

Bruce Birchman, an administrative law judge at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, also found California still owed the companies $3 billion in unpaid bills, meaning California will have to come up with an additional $1.2 billion if the commission adopts his recommendations.

California is seeking $8.9 billion in refunds for 2000 and 2001, when power prices soared and the state faced energy shortages and rolling blackouts.

Boston

Boston cardinal, bishops subpoenaed to testify

Boston Cardinal Bernard Law, the nation’s senior Roman Catholic prelate, could soon be facing questions from a Massachusetts grand jury investigating the priest sex abuse scandal.

Law and seven bishops who once worked for him were subpoenaed last week to appear before a grand jury looking into possible criminal violations by church officials, a source familiar with the subpoenas said Thursday on condition of anonymity.

Law, who has testified in depositions for civil suits, flew to Rome the day after receiving the subpoena. He remained Thursday at the Vatican amid speculation that he will resign or get approval to declare the embattled archdiocese bankrupt.

Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said Law was expected to meet today with Pope John Paul II.

Washington, D.C.

Banks quarantine plasma frozen in West Nile epidemic

Blood banks are quarantining all plasma frozen during the West Nile virus epidemic — an estimated 30,000 pints ” to further reduce the low risk of spreading the disease through blood products.

West Nile virus is spread mostly by infected mosquitoes, but federal health officials discovered in September that it also occasionally is spread through donated blood or organs. Of the more than 3,800 West Nile cases this year, about 13 are believed to have been caused by a blood transfusion.

Most donated blood — the red blood cells and platelets — is used right away. But plasma, the liquid part of blood, is routinely frozen and thus can be used up to a year later.

California

Judge sentences handyman to death for Yosemite killings

A former motel handyman was sentenced to death Thursday for murdering three Yosemite National Park tourists in 1999.

Cary Stayner, 41, was ordered to die by lethal injection in state prison, a fate that could be decades away on the nation’s most congested death row.

Stayner was convicted of murdering Carole Sund, 42, her daughter, Juli, 15, and their Argentine friend, Silvina Pelosso, 16, during a trip to Yosemite in February 1999.