Russia

Eleven of 13 trapped miners found alive in rescue

Rescue workers found alive 11 of the 13 Russian miners who had been trapped for six days, local media reported early today. One had died, and another was still missing.

Meanwhile, in the Russian Far East, an explosion in a mine in the Primorye region, claimed 5 lives. Another 66 miners were rescued after an explosion in the “Tsentralnaya Mine” in the town of Partizansk, Viktor Beltsov, a spokesman for the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry said.

At the mine in southern Russia, the men were reached when drillers managed to break through to the pit area where the miners had sought refuge, the officials said. The miners were to be brought up to the surface later today.

Washington

Defendant gets 14 years in biological weapons case

A computer engineer who was found with ricin in his work cubicle was sentenced Tuesday to nearly 14 years in prison for possessing the deadly toxin.

The judge rejected pleas from the family of Kenneth Olsen to set aside the conviction or issue a light sentence.

“This conduct was dangerous and reckless,” U.S. District Judge Frem Nielsen said.

Authorities said they found about 3 grams of ricin powder in two test tubes and a jar in Olsen’s locked file cabinet at work. Federal witnesses testified that was enough to kill as many as 900 people, depending on how it was used.

Traces of ricin were also found on allergy tablets, a turkey baster and coffee grinder found at Olsen’s workstation. Also found were documents detailing how to kill someone without leaving a trace.

Olsen, 49, made a brief statement after the sentencing, saying he was simply curious about ricin.

Florida

Police investigate death of teen prankster

Boca Raton authorities are investigating the death of a 16-year-old who was shot to death by a neighbor while playing a late-night prank.

Mark Drewes and a friend were knocking on neighbors’ doors and running away around midnight Friday when Jay Steven Levin said he mistook the 6-foot-2 teen for a burglar and “thought he saw something in Drewes’ hand,” according to sheriff’s reports.

Levin answered the knock on his door armed with a handgun and shot the teen, who died later, said sheriff’s spokeswoman Diane Carhart.

Levin has not been arrested, but the State Attorney’s Office could file charges against Levin, seek an indictment from a grand jury or decide not to go on with a case against him, Spokesman Mike Edmondson said.

Texas

Millionaire recounts cutting up neighbor

New York real estate heir Robert Durst testified Tuesday that when he cut up his neighbor’s body, it was like “a nightmare with blood everywhere.”

Durst, accused of murdering 71-year-old Morris Black, had said a day earlier he did not recall details about the dismemberment. But when pressed by prosecutor Joel Bennett on Tuesday, he said he remembered the blood.

“It was like waking up from a dream or a nightmare with blood everywhere,” Durst said. “I remember like I was looking down on something and I was swimming in blood, and I kept spitting up and spitting up, and I don’t know what is real and I don’t know what is not real.”

The millionaire said Black died accidentally during a struggle over a gun and that he cut him up and disposed of the body in Galveston Bay.

Durst, 60, whose family runs The Durst Organization, a privately held $1 billion New York company, faces from five to 99 years in prison if convicted.