Washington, D.C.

Appeals court weighs music subpoenas

The three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia offered few hints Tuesday whether it would permit the music industry to continue using special copyright subpoenas to track and sue computer users who download songs on the Internet.

The decision, expected later this fall, could have important consequences for the music industry’s unprecedented campaign to discourage piracy.

The Recording Industry Association of America has issued at least 1,500 such subpoenas this summer. It has filed civil lawsuits against 261 people it accused of illegally distributing music online.

Los Angeles

Playwright, scholar Errol Hill dies

Errol G. Hill, a playwright, director and expert on black dramatists in the United States and the Caribbean who was the first black to earn tenure at Dartmouth College, died of cancer Monday at his home in Hanover, N.H. He was 82.

Hill, a native of Trinidad who became a naturalized U.S. citizen, taught at Dartmouth for 35 years until retiring in 1989.

Over a five-decade career, he produced and directed 120 plays and pageants in the United States, West Indies, Nigeria and England, wrote 11 plays and authored or edited 15 books, including a notable history of black Shakespearean actors.

Florida

Suicidal driver’s son dies from injuries

The 8-year-old son of a man who killed himself by swerving into the path of a tractor trailer died Tuesday of injuries from the crash, hospital officials said.

The boy, Bryan Randall II, was brought to the hospital in critical condition Monday after the crash that killed his father, Bryan Randall. Another son, Julian, 6, was injured. Randall also was suspected of killing his daughter two days earlier.

Police said Randall wanted to kill his children because an impending divorce would strip him of custody.

Sometime over the weekend, police say Randall dumped his 2-year-old daughter, Yana, and another son, Regal, 4, in a lake in suburban Orlando. The girl drowned.

Chicago

West Nile fever may afflict 100,000

A nasty three-day bout of fever is turning out to be a surprisingly common symptom of West Nile virus infection and may afflict about 100,000 Americans this year.

Dr. Lyle Petersen said that about 20 percent of people who catch the virus get sick this way, while far smaller numbers — approximately one in 150 — get severe neurological symptoms. Most of the roughly 500,000 people expected to catch the virus this year will show no symptoms at all.

Petersen, who oversees mosquito-borne diseases for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, discussed this year’s outbreak Tuesday at a meeting in Chicago of the American Society for Microbiology.