New York

’60s radical paroled

Kathy Boudin, the ’60s radical who has served 22 years in prison for a 1981 armored car heist in which three men were killed, was granted parole Wednesday.

Boudin, 60, a one-time member of the Weather Underground described as a model inmate in prison, had been denied parole just three months ago.

Thomas Grant, a spokesman for the state Division of Parole, said Boudin would be released Oct. 1 or earlier.

At the Bedford Hills state prison in Westchester County, Boudin developed a program on parenting behind bars and helped write a book for inmates with children in foster care.

Her release had been opposed by the families of the three men killed — Sgt. Edward O’Grady and Officer Waverly Brown of the Nyack police and Peter Paige, a Brink’s guard.

Boudin, daughter of civil rights attorney Leonard Boudin, was recruited for the Brink’s robbery by Black Liberation Army members.

West Virginia

Shootings tied to drugs rather than sniper

Investigators said Wednesday that two of last week’s three slayings outside West Virginia convenience stores appeared to have been drug-related, not the acts of a sniper choosing random victims.

Ballistic tests show a .22-caliber rifle was used in the shootings of two victims shot about 90 minutes apart at convenience stores 10 miles from each other, Kanawha County Chief Deputy Phil Morris said.

“We can’t eliminate the possibility of a sniper, but it appears like it is drug-related,” Morris said.

Ballistic tests were incomplete for the third victim, shot four days earlier in Charleston. However, Morris said the characteristics of the bullet were similar to those of the bullets in the other two shootings.

Residents in Campbells Creek — home of victims Jeanie Patton, 31, and Okey Meadows Jr., 26 — had raised concerns that their Aug. 14 deaths may have been drug-related.

California

Bomblike devices left at Schwab’s home

Authorities destroyed bomblike devices found near the weekend home of businessman Charles Schwab and at one of his finance company’s corporate offices.

No one was injured, and police said they weren’t sure whether the devices would have exploded.

Bomb experts were piecing together the devices, talking to Schwab and his staff and studying surveillance tapes in search of suspects, Monterey Sheriff Mike Kanalakis said Tuesday.

Kanalakis said X-rays showed that two briefcases contained propane canisters that could create a blast large enough to cause serious injury or death. The devices were safely detonated Monday.

The briefcases were placed outside a Schwab brokerage office in Carmel and near Schwab’s weekend home near the Pebble Beach golf course.

West Bank

Reuters journalist buried

A Reuters cameraman shot by U.S. soldiers in Iraq was buried Wednesday during a ceremony that drew hundreds of mourners to his West Bank hometown of Hebron.

Mazen Dana, 41, was killed on assignment in Iraq. Many of the mourners carried Palestinian flags or photographs of Dana.

He spent most of the past decade covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Hebron. On the job, he was shot and beaten several times by Israeli troops, and he acknowledged the risks of his job.

Dana, a father of four, killed while videotaping Sunday near a U.S.-run prison on the outskirts of Baghdad. The U.S. Army said its soldiers, on two tanks, mistook his camera for a rocket-propelled grenade launcher.

Dana was the second Reuters cameraman — and 17th news organization employee — to die since the war began March 20.

London

‘Muppet,’ ‘Eeyorish’ join Oxford Dictionary

Are you feeling like a “muppet” because you cannot remember the meaning of a word? Or are you a bit “Eeyorish” and confused at our rapidly changing language?

Those are among 3,000 new words and expressions, many of them slang or foreign, that have entered English usage and are included in the new edition of the Oxford Dictionary of English, to be released today.

“Muppet,” taken from the children’s TV show, “Sesame Street,” means a foolish person, while “Eeyorish” refers to the Winnie the Pooh character known for his gloomy outlook.

Many new entries come from the world of science and high-tech. Thus “blog” (short for Web log), and “egosurfing” (searching the Internet for references to oneself) are joined in the dictionary by phrases such as “shotgun cloning” (the insertion of random fragments of DNA).