Washington, D.C.

Asteroid to make close pass to Earth

An asteroid named for a Celtic god of war will come as close to Earth this week as it has since 1353.

The space rock known as Toutatis will come today within 960,000 miles of Earth, relatively close by cosmic standards, Astronomy Magazine said in a statement Monday to Reuters news service.

Toutatis poses no danger to Earth. However, if it did hit the planet, it would create a blast with the energy equivalent to 1 million tons of TNT.

Measuring about 3 miles by 1.5 miles, Toutatis will speed by Earth at 22,000 miles per hour.

Boston

Harvard scholar admits plagiarism

A Harvard law professor who represented Al Gore in his lawsuit over the 2000 election results and worked on other Democratic Party issues apologized for lifting from another scholar’s work without giving proper credit.

Constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe acknowledged that his 1985 book, “God Save This Honorable Court,” borrows liberally from Henry Abraham’s 1974 book, “Justices and Presidents,” including one exact 19-word passage.

“My well-meaning effort to write a book accessible to a lay audience through the omission of footnotes or endnotes — in contrast to the practice I have always followed in my scholarly writing — came at an unacceptable cost,” Tribe wrote.

Detroit

Dog-handler sentenced for planting evidence

A woman who once was recognized as one of the nation’s best trainers and handlers of cadaver-sniffing dogs was sentenced Tuesday to 21 months in prison for planting bones and other fake evidence in cases she worked.

Sandra M. Anderson, 43, of Sanford, pleaded guilty in March to five felony charges, including obstruction of justice and making false statements to federal authorities.

In addition to the prison term, U.S. District Court Judge Patrick J. Duggan ordered Anderson to pay more than $14,500 in restitution to several law enforcement agencies.

Anderson and her dog Eagle, a Doberman-German shorthair pointer mix, were invited to Panama and Bosnia to look for victims of political repression, and to ground zero after 9-11.

Virginia

Washington’s distillery site of new whiskey trail

Everyone has heard the phrase “George Washington slept here.” A new museum and tourism trail will pay tribute to where he made and drank whiskey.

The chief historian at Mount Vernon, the first president’s Potomac-side mansion, disclosed plans Tuesday for the George Washington Distillery Museum, which will be become the gateway for a new American Whiskey Trail.

“We hope people will see this incredible working distillery and go off and visit other things,” said James Rees, Mount Vernon’s executive director.

The trail goes from the Fraunces Tavern Museum in New York City, where Washington bade farewell to his troops in 1783, through several museums and plantations in Pennsylvania. It includes distilleries in Virginia, Tennessee and Kentucky.