Virginia

Regan gets life in spying for Iraq, China

A retired Air Force master sergeant was sentenced to life in prison without parole Thursday for offering to sell U.S. intelligence secrets to Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and the Chinese government.

U.S. District Judge Gerald Bruce Lee approved the sentence, which was brokered by Brian Patrick Regan’s lawyers and prosecutors. As part of the agreement, the government promised not to prosecute Regan’s wife, Anette, and allowed her to keep a portion of Regan’s military pension.

Regan also agreed to tell the government about any classified information he may have given to other people or countries, and to submit to lie-detector tests. His wife also agreed to cooperate.

Regan, 40, was convicted last month on two attempted espionage counts and a single charge of gathering national defense information.

San Francisco

More than 1,000 arrested during antiwar protests

In the largest show of antiwar civil disobedience since the Vietnam War, thousands of activists swarmed downtown San Francisco on Thursday, paralyzing traffic in dozens of intersections and wreaking havoc on businesses in the financial district.

San Francisco was home to the country’s most raucous unrest with more than 1,025 demonstrators arrested — a single-day record. Widespread disruptions left many infuriated — even in America’s most progressive big city, which cherishes its reputation as a hospitable place for dissent.

“One of the painful ironies of this war is that one of the most antiwar cities in the nation, San Francisco, is being disproportionately harmed by the tactics of antiwar protesters,” Mayor Willie Brown said.

Protesters vowed no end to the chaos, even as city leaders lamented the $500,000 a day cost in police overtime and the distraction from protecting the city against terror attacks.

New Orleans

Court-martial discouraged in friendly fire bombing

A military hearing officer Thursday recommended against court-martialing two U.S. pilots who killed four Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan last year in a friendly fire bombing one of the men blamed on the “fog of war.”

Although Col. Patrick Rosenow said there was enough evidence to court-martial both pilots, he said “nonjudicial or administrative punishment would maintain “the interests of good order and discipline.” Rosenow led the nine-day investigative hearing in January.

His recommendation is a key step in determining whether Majs. Harry Schmidt and William Umbach will face a military trial on involuntary manslaughter and other charges that could put each of them in prison for up to 64 years.

The two Illinois Air National Guard pilots said they thought they were under enemy attack last April 17 and had never been told allied troops might be conducting exercises in the area that night.