WASHINGTON, D.C.

Bank’s failure to act on Pinochet spurs outrage

Senators expressed outrage Thursday at the failure of Riggs Bank executives to act while managers helped former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet conceal millions and turned a blind eye to improper payments to officials from Equatorial Guinea.

Striking details such as a suitcase stuffed with cash became public at a Senate hearing into Riggs’ handling of the accounts. Lawmakers said it was impossible that bank executives were unaware of the actions.

In fact, the bank’s former chairman and chief executive, Joseph Allbritton, went to Chile to solicit Pinochet’s business a decade ago, and he and other senior bank officials were familiar with the transactions in Pinochet’s accounts, senators said.

NEW YORK City

Anti-war group reaches settlement for billboard

An activist group and media giant Clear Channel on Thursday settled a dispute over an anti-war billboard that would have loomed over Times Square during the Republican National Convention and until Election Day, the group said.

Project Billboard has agreed to two billboards to run during the convention: a giant peace dove and a ticker displaying the cost of the war in Iraq in dollars.

That proposal replaces one that would have shown a stylized bomb and fuse above the message, “Democracy is best taught by example, not by war.” Clear Channel had objected to a bomb image in New York.

BALTIMORE

Man who shot priest let off without prison

A man who shot and wounded a priest who had allegedly molested him as a boy pleaded guilty to gun charges Thursday and was let off without a prison sentence.

“It’s a big relief,” said Dontee Stokes, a 28-year-old barber. “I’m thankful to have the support of other victims and the support of the community.”

Stokes had already served 18 months under house arrest.

A jury acquitted him in 2002 of attempted murder and other charges in the shooting of the Rev. Maurice Blackwell. Stokes told jurors he had an “out-of-body experience” when he shot the priest three times for allegedly molesting him as a teenager between 1989 and 1992.