Texas

Ex-professor sentenced in plague-scare case

A former Texas Tech University professor who started a bioterrorism scare when he reported plague bacteria missing last year was sentenced Wednesday to two years in prison.

Dr. Thomas C. Butler, 62, of Lubbock, also was fined $15,000 and ordered to pay restitution of $38,000. He earlier had agreed to retire from the school and surrender his medical license.

Butler remains free on bond, but must report to federal authorities on April 14.

He had faced up to 240 years in prison and millions in fines for convictions that stemmed from an investigation after his report that 30 vials of the bacteria were missing from his lab in January 2003.

He later said he accidentally destroyed the samples, but during his trial he testified he had no clear memory of destroying the vials and that they could have been destroyed during his cleanup of an accident.

New York City

Celebrities announce liberal radio network

Comedian Al Franken is baiting conservatives again, and this time he’s bringing a bunch of friends to back him up.

Franken will be the lead personality on Air America Radio, a startup venture promising a liberal alternative to powerhouse radio talk show pundits like Rush Limbaugh.

The backers of Air America announced their programming lineup Wednesday and said they planned to launch the network March 31 in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and San Francisco.

Franken and fellow comedian Janeane Garofalo will have co-hosts for their live three-hour shows. Other shows will be hosted by Randi Rhodes, a radio personality from southern Florida, and Lizz Winstead, a co-creator of “The Daily Show” on Comedy Central.

Franken, in a swipe at Fox News host Bill O’Reilly, plans to call his midday show “The O’Franken Factor.”

Boston

Study shows diet can lower gout risk

Eating less red meat and seafood while consuming more low-fat dairy products cuts the risk of developing the painful joint condition gout by about half, according to researchers who studied the diets of thousands of men.

Eating lots of vegetables and fruit, shunning alcohol use and maintaining a normal body weight also significantly reduced the chances of getting gout, the most common form of inflammatory arthritis in men.

“Every single seafood type we looked at was associated with increased risk of gout,” said Dr. Hyon K. Choi, a rheumatologist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

Gout affects about 3.4 million American men, causing sometimes-excruciating episodes of pain in feet and joints, but is less common in women, occurring only after menopause.

The link between gout and rich foods and alcohol has been conventional wisdom for centuries, leading to its reputation as a disease of middle-aged rich man.

Oregon

Assisted suicide rises slightly under new law

Physician-assisted suicide increased slightly in 2003 in Oregon, the only state that allows doctors to prescribe a lethal dose of drugs to terminally ill patients, according to a report released Wednesday.

Forty-two terminally ill patients killed themselves last year under the assisted-suicide law, said the report by the Oregon Department of Human Services. It was an increase of about 10 percent from 2002, when 38 people committed suicide legally.

The assisted-suicide law allows terminally ill patients with less than six months to live to request a lethal dose of drugs after two doctors confirm the diagnosis and judge the patient mentally competent to make the request.